30 days of abundance // day 6: healing

back from Taiwan. we had a beautiful Buddhist ceremony to send off my grandma. the trip was sad and difficult of course, but I'm really glad I could be there with my brother to support the family just be present. all things considered, my heart feels strong. I'm incredibly grateful for all the love and support from everyone around me, and all the people checking in to make sure I'm ok. and through this whole ride, so many people have helped me along the way. I just feel tremendously blessed and more appreciative than I can say. thank you.

so I'm healing.

beginning the next chapter. it really feels like a whole new start. getting settled into my new place. the book is coming along. preparing for my next yoga retreat in december.

and, appropriately, getting back to practicing craniosacral therapy.

which is interesting, as I never ever saw myself working in the healing arts. my training has always been pretty cerebral, left-brain, hyper analytical kind of stuff.

but I started to open to healing arts through acupuncture and yoga. a few years ago, I had terrible lower back pain after a move. it was so bad I couldn't sit down without grabbing a wall. I got it checked out and nothing obvious was wrong, so I was prescribed muscle relaxers which only kind of helped. the doctor also recommended acupuncture for the pain, so I figured what the hell. I got a one-hour treatment, and the next day, I could literally bend over and touch my toes and do high kicks. it was crazy. I couldn't help but be like, "huh. energy meridians. interesting."

I kept on with periodic acupuncture for stress and general wellness. it coupled well with yoga to keep back pain, body pain, and stress at bay, balancing out the desk-and-computer academic life.

and I was particularly intrigued by the training I chose in bali, because it had an energetic component. craniosacral training was incorporated throughout the yoga training, and we started to learn how to feel in with our bodies, and become more sensitive to subtle energy. we also learned about the chakras, meridians, and other ancient systems of understanding the body, healing, and wellness.

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I've written some about the first two chakras already; I've found the real-life application of understanding the way our bodies are connected to our emotions, our experiences, thoughts and intentions to both be profound and extremely useful. one of the coolest things I've learned is that nobody can actually heal anyone else, we can just hold space and help other people find their way to wellness. also, that rather than being some sort of out there in the stars magical somethingorother, the most effective way to practice is to be deeply grounded and work from there.

so what may seem like weirdo spacey stuff, actually requires to practitioner to be extremely down to earth.

and the first time I received craniosacral therapy myself, not really having any idea what it was or what it was about, the effects were real and positive. my fellow trainees and I worked on each other a lot, and it's difficult to describe the level of the effects we all felt. we went way past relieving physical pain, to clearing all sorts of stuck emotions and baggage. in the end, we reintegrated to places that just felt lighter, clearer, and more at ease.

I'm still learning how to describe cranio and what it's all about. it doesn't lend itself easily to description, and it kind of has to be experienced to really get a good sense of what it is. but I'm healing myself and learning mores about healing all the time. I'm excited to see where this road leads me, and to learn more about how to do this good work in the world.

30 days of abundance // day 5: sex. creativity. passion.

I'm  getting on a 13 hour flight to Taiwan for my grandmother's funeral tonight. it's a strange day to write about sex, creativity, and passion, but I'll keep it simple.

thinking about my creative work and following my passions, especially in light of the challenges I've experienced along the way, there's a steve jobs quote that comes to mind: 

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

— steve jobs

work and love go together. the reason sex, creativity, money, passion, and even power go together in the second chakra, which is housed in the genitalia/lower abdomen area, is that it's the seat of life force. in Chinese, it's called life fire.

it makes sense, right? the energetic place from which we create, houses the seat of our deepest desires as well as our deepest fears and wounds.

the burning question is, what are you doing with your life force?

when I feel both passion and fear - the drive to move forward and the fear of vulnerability that goes with it, I know I'm on the right track in dealing to my life force. 

and the shadow side of life, is if course death. but facing that fear can actually release us by putting things into perspective. my favorite steve jobs quote of all time is this one:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

— steve jobs

I take a certain amount of shit for being prone to passion and perhaps overly idealistic. I take a certain amount of pride in staying clear on what I consider to be a larger perspective. and I do what I can every day to honor my creative force and move through the fear that comes with vulnerability.

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30 days of abundance // day 4: feet on the ground part 2

humility doesn't have to be boring. grounding isn't nearly as lame as it sounds. it actually opens a door shift to the way we think about nature, technology, and our bodies. it's a pathway to feeling better.

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in teacher training in bali, we actually spent the entire first week working on grounding. the second chakra is about sex, creativity, money, power, and passion, and as you can imagine, I'm eager to get there. but I get the feeling I'm going to take some time in the ground here, because it's, of course, where everything begins and everything ends.

I know this can all sound a bit esoteric and philosophical, and woo woo, not the stuff of concern for serious people who have shit to do. I know. I've been there. the main focus of my 10 years spent in higher education and all of the work I've ever done, was on our most pressing social problems. rooting to basic human needs: homelessness, housing, poverty in the US, poverty in the developing world. and I dug and I dug and I studied and studied and thought and wrote and argued and worked and read until my eyes nearly bled.

I promise you: everything comes back to our bodies and the soil. always.

national security and wars: soil (you're like, no it's water! or oil! or energy! but it's all connected). everything comes back to the fact that we are embodied, and our bodies have needs that are connected to everything around us. and while we think in the "modern" age that we have our basic needs met and have moved onto higher goals, I'm certain that is not quite the case. we think we're seeking abundance, but we're skipping steps. here's the shift:

abundance. to have abundance in our lives, we have to remember that we are embodied.

 

we are embodied and we are connected to everything. sounds simple, but we tend to forget. it's part of our (at least American) culture to forget. how much time to we spend in our heads?

but let's break it down in the simplest terms. 

we breathe.

in oxygen, out carbon dioxide. from the atmosphere. every day, all the time. plants breathe, in carbon dioxide, out oxygen. from the atmosphere. so we're sharing the atmosphere with the plants and animals.

and we eat.

a little more complicated. plants take in energy from the sun (meditate on that one, for a little while, it's actually pretty mind-blowing). they take in minerals and water from the ground, and they also take in and give off water from the atmosphere. we eat these plants, and some of us eat animals that eat these plants. we take in minerals and water and energy from the plants and the animals we eat. and we poop. we release it back (what we do with poop nowadays is another story). so yeah. we are nature. for sure. unequivocally. it's all the same damn thing. and it works as a bunch of overlaid, interconnected systems.

but we have technology! it overrides nature!

actually, technology = nature. 

science is a system of observation. all we've ever been observing through the scientific method is nature. technology is the stuff we come up with when we rearrange and utilize stuff in nature.**

nature as a concept, I think, is really screwing us up. because we insist on thinking that it's somehow outside of us. but that's nonsense. let's get this right.

everything is nature. every damn thing. the trees, the rivers, the whole friggin earth, all the animals, all of us, all the stars, the sun, the whole motherfucking universe. nature.

we are part of nature and we are embodied. we want abundance. when we get into our bodies we feel better.

maybe not at first, because we're not used to being there, and it kind of hurts. we might start to feel things we made a point not to feel. in fact, we go to great lengths to get out of our bodies for this reason.

but it matters that we're here and that we belong here. if we look at maslow's heirarchy of needs, we find that the foundation of being well lies in physical safety, security, food and water. some interpretations include identity, financial security, and home.

alright alright. we want to get into our bodies. how do we do that?

1. by remembering we are embodied. by being in our bodies. by moving (even a little). by breathing. just by getting out of our heads and brining awareness to the life in our bodies.

2. by touching the soil. with our bare feet, gardening, doing grounding exercises, breathing. 

3. by eating with awareness. remembering that the food comes from the sun and the soil and the air, and the worms and microbes and all the little creatures/plants that help the system along to bring us something with nutrients, minerals, energy, and water in forms that are accessible to our bodies. if we eat jacked up food, our bodies get jacked up.

4. by nourishing the soil. with compost and worms and coverage and helpful plants and animals and microbes. as it turns out, if we jack up the soil, we mess up the whole system (upon which we depend). the food gets jacked up, and our bodies follow. nourish soil, nourish body.

 

get in your body for real and you will feel better.

as it turns out, there's actually a bacterium in healthy soil called Mycobacterium vaccae that stimulates seratonin production, acting as a natural antidepressant.

that light feeling that gardeners get, it turns out isn't just lore. I know from experience, that in the aftermath of one particularly gnarly breakup, all I wanted to do was dig holes in the yard. I dug and planted, and planted and dug. and I thought it was just the physical movement, but it turns out that actually getting soil on my hands and feet was exactly what I needed.

so at the beginning of every yoga class, and before every craniosacral session, I center and ground. I bring my awareness into my body, root in, breathe, and find center. this also works before big meetings and public speaking.

it's powerful.

to connect to our emotional and psychological and physiological roots. it matters for us and for everything around us. and nailing it down opens the door to more fun stuff: passion, sex, money, power, and creativity. 

#30daysofabundance

#savethemicrobes

*an intellectual property note: if you are interested in this story, great!! tell it wide and far!! but please, if you use my words, quote me. if you use my ideas, cite me. if you're not sure, contact me. love.

** (hat/tip) David Joshua Levy, Jeremy Kamo, Jeff Hamaoui, and everyone else who was on the top of the mountain with me near Tesla's house, having that grand conversation.

30 days of abundance // day 3: feet on the ground part 1

there was a decent-sized spider on my leg just now. I freaked out a little and flicked it - not enough to hurt it...it just bounced off a tarp and onto the ground and skittered off. I felt bad, though - I think it was just coming for a visit. I got into looking up animal symbolism a couple of months ago when I was up in the cabin writing, and a different animal seemed to cruise by each day. I got hummingbirds, dragonflies, hawks, woodpeckers, flies, spiders, gnats, and even a roadrunner, and each time the symbolism seemed apt for the day. so I googled "spider symbolism" in honor of my visitor and this was the top hit:

http://www.whats-your-sign.com/spider-symbol-meaning.html

this jumped out at me: "In Native American symbolism, the Spider is a symbol of protection against torrential storms. In yet other Native American lore accounts, the Spider (personified as the Grandmother) was the teacher and protector of esoteric wisdom."

 

I'll take it. I can feel my grandmother today. 

this is the second part that jumped out:

“Not only do Spiders and their webs draw attention to our life choices, they also give us an overview of how we can manipulate our thinking in order to construct the life we wish to live.

Spiders do this by calling our awareness to the amazing construction of their webs. Fully functional, practical, and ingenious in design - Spider webs serve as homes, food storage, egg incubators - seemingly limitless in their functionality.

When we consider this ingenious diversity, we can also consider the web-like construct of our own lives. How are we designing the most effective life?”

— spider symbolism

it popped out because I'd made a writing note the other day that said, "cycles & systems & interconnectedness: watch me weave it all together."

and the spider symbolism seems to be about both the structure of our lives individually, the structure of of our lives collectively, and today, for me, the structure of my work. and about how in the world to think of all those things at the same time.

I originally thought I would write about grounding today - about identity, root, home, and safety, as well as the actual, literal ground, and our relationship to it...why it keeps us well. I had this whole idea about how I would climb through the chakras each day this week to explain healing...starting from the ground. that seems not to be happening quite exactly as planned, but it will most likely fit into the web. less like a ladder, more like a web. 

appropriate, actually, because I have an associative brain, and what I do is literally weave ideas together that don't usually find themselves together. so I'm going to get weird today and talk about spider symbolism and death and how it relates to our bodies and climate change. 

 

halloween, day of the dead, I'm going with it.

the weaving is going to take a few days, if not weeks, for it to all come together, but what's important at this stage is why I'm doing this weaving. I'm doing it because through this crazy process of exploration and trial and error, I've found the most amazing things. I want to share what I've found because I know it can help people and help unfuck the world. not just unfuck, but actually make better.

this is how we unfuck the world: by realizing that body - spirit - and environment are all the same thing.

body * spirit * environment

feeling better and saving the world are actually - literally for real physically - connected, not just in some philosophical way. understanding how to take care of our bodies physically is the key to understanding how to take care of the world physically. the same is true energetically. 

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woo woo, perhaps. I mean, how in the hell do we do that?

and what the shit does it have to do with reality?

like physical reality and real problems and real bodies, etc?

weirdly, I think it starts with death. there's no death without life and no life without death. there's no way to do the work I'm doing without talking about death, and there's no way to understand what I'm saying without thinking about death. the shadow of the harvest season is the coming of the fall and winter. the shadow of growing food is fertilizer. the shadow of eating is poop. the shadow of holding yourself up is letting go. the shadow of living is dying.

and part of the story, is realizing that we are, of course, nature. there is no separation.

our bodies are every bit a part of nature, everything we make, every building we build, every piece of technology comes from utilizing things from nature and knowledge about how nature works.

in studying sustainable cities in school, I had a particular interest in the role of food in sustainability, which led me to urban gardens. this interest actually led me to the job that I only had for 3 weeks and the non-profit I've mentioned, which was focused on the relationship between soil health and climate change. this group formed around a guy's encounter with a talk by Grame Sait. he says that we can store enough carbon in the soil to reverse climate change, among other things. that's a mighty claim, and by now I've followed all the threads, which I'll unveil in due time. but to start, let me introduce you to the first mindfuck.

we've come to believe that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels. the truth is, not exactly. climate change is caused by disrupting the carbon cycle and the water cycle.

 

shift the way you look at the problem, and you'll shift the way you look at the solutions.

get everything out of the way that isn't truth, and the truth will come clear. welcome to the microbe mindfuck.

the carbon cycle and the water cycle have everything to do with tiny little creatures/plants that we can't see (microscopic life, aka microbes). we don't think of them as life, and we keep killing them in all these different ways. when we kill them, we mess up our own body systems and the earth's systems. if we stop killing them and protect them instead, we can restore our body systems (health) and the earth's systems.**

these little plants in the ocean produce 40% of the world's oxygen. these little creatures in the soil help plants pull in water, minerals, and nutrients from the ground. we, and the animals we eat, eat those plants. these little creatures in our guts have everything to do with our well being, from our digestion (how we take in nutrition), to our moods, to our immune system.

their relationship to the carbon cycle is critical, because they are what help the soil pull carbon in from the atmosphere into the soil, through plants.

the relationship between plants and animals and microbes and the soil and our guts is profound, to say the least. there are 100 trillion microbes in our guts; 10 times more than human cells in our bodies. we are more microbe than human, in a sense.

saving these tiny life forms involves compost, decay, poop/"waste"/fertilizer, fungus; the stuff that goes on underground and in waste piles. in involves understanding and working with the cycles of death and rebirth. part of the reason I think this story has been so overlooked is because of our aversion to facing death.

interestingly, the words human and humility, derive from the latin word humus, and the greek hamai, which both mean earth, or ground.***

if we save our silly asses, it will be born from humility, rather than hubris.

this is where grounding comes in, which I will mostly likely write about tomorrow. if this makes absolutely no sense yet, not to worry. I will be explaining the whole thing in picture form, forthcoming.*

#30daysofabundance

#savethemicrobes

*an intellectual property note: if you are interested in this story, great!! tell it wide and far!! but please, if you use my words, quote me. if you use my ideas, cite me. if you're not sure, contact me. love.

**hat/tip ashton watkins

***hat/tip Graeme Sait

30 days of abundance // day 2: work

I was just reading about this moment in 1497, when de gama's men landed on the malabar coast, the spice coast of india and motherload of the global spice trade (5 years after columbus found the wrong place), following 10 months at sea crossing the unknown indian ocean in monsoons. the locals famously asked the first pale-faced explorer:

"what the devil brought you here?"

 -- from spice: the history of a temptation by jack turner

I feel a bit like that explorer - blinking and looking around, having landed after a daunting and sometimes treacherous year of figuring shit out and trying to find my way to some, nearly mythical, abundant land full of exotic things, my life's purpose, and riches.

my voyage started in venice, CA, where I graduated from grad school in May 2013. PhD in urban planning, sub-fields: sustainable cities and affordable housing. boom. finishing that thing took every last ounce of everything in me, and I emerged with no money and no plan. five of my years of school were funded, one I worked, two of those years I got paid to be a writer and live the charmed life of someone with a healthy book contract. I knew how to create something from nothing; I didn't yet know how the independence that time afforded would drive me in and out of all kinds of nutty endeavors.

it drove me in and out of a job that seemed amazing that lasted only three weeks, and into and out of a volunteer group that turned into setting up the beginnings of a non-profit for about four months paid and a couple more unpaid.

 

it fed me, and taught me, but also bled me dry.

actually, as I know now, I bled myself dry. in the middle of all of this, I had to move twice in the churning gentrification that is venice. after moving and unpacking my whole life, cat, and all my crap once, having spent the last of my money on the move, I found out on christmas eve that my new house was being bought and I would have to do it all over again.

so this time I made a different decision. I negotiated a lease buyout, sold and gave away most of my things, put the rest in storage. a kind soul took my cat in, and I went to bali.

while I was in bali a whole bunch of shit fell away. the curtains parted, at least for a time, and in that moment things came clear. my three projects, my foundation, emerged. clear as day.

it's a triangle.

1. the microbe book

2. healing arts (yoga and cranio) 

3. the bali sustainability project

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project 1. book. I'm writing a book and building a platform for it. it's about how the interconnectedness of things is the only thing that can save our silly asses from destruction and demise, and the only thing that ever could. it's about soil health, microbes, and the possibility of reversing climate change. the current working title is something like, the microbe mindfuck: how microbes explain damn near everything. of course it's kind of a book about everything. there's a lot more coming so I'm not going to give it all away just yet, but I've been working with this topic for a long time, and I've figured out that a book about it is the best use of my talents in telling the story to a larger audience. if it works, the impact and the ripples will be profound. trying to get it work is fucking hard and scary. it's quite possibly the most honest endeavor I've ever attempted.

 

it's stimulating, inspiring, humbling, and immensely exciting.

project 2. healing arts. I teach yoga and practice craniosacral therapy. as happens to many yoga teacher trainees that go out of intellectual curiosity and for general well-being, I didn't expect to love teaching and practicing the way I do. yoga is the common thread in almost every ounce of well-being I've ever known. teaching and practicing also keep me sane, honest, and centered. to do the work I need to continually deal to my own shit to help others deal to theirs. it's hard, humbling, deeply fulfilling work. helping people feel better, on the spot, within an hour, is really something.

 

and to make a living by helping people, which is really the only thing I've ever wanted, is something special.

project 3. bali sustainability project. this project is on a slower track. all three projects are quite big, and this one will take a minute. I'm working on constructing an organization and a program that can work with the balinese to set up a sustainability plan and programs. development in bali has been absolutely insane for the last 10 years. the island doesn't have the resources or infrastructure to handle all the madness at the rate it's coming. bali is a sacred, beautiful, and deeply special place in the world. for all the places that need sustainability work, I'm focusing there because I believe the impact, both large and small scale, could be immense.

so these are the three projects. in all, I'm doing many, many things to support these projects, and they all go together. the whole lot is about being well, as individuals, as communities, as the whole world. it's about the threads that tie us all together and run through seemingly disparate problems. physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual wellness manifest on different levels. I can't help but tend to all the levels I can get my hands on.

I've never in my life had the feeling of being called to a purpose the way I do now. it's honestly kind of insane. the other day, I hit a wall of self-doubt and weirdness, and today I remember that all I have to do is do my work. it makes things very simple and much less scary.

and as long as I do me and stick to my authentic self, everything that resonates will line up, and everything that doesn't will fall away.

tomorrow :: feet on the ground

#30daysofabundance

30 days of abundance // day 1: yoga

abundance is my theme for the month. it's harvest season, the season of reaping the rewards of months and years of hard work, and of celebrating those rewards. I've been working toward abundance in all areas, for myself, for others, and the world.

everywhere I go, people ask me what I'm doing with my life. today is 11/1, and over the next 30 days, I'm going to open the doors of my work and my journey to whoever is curious.

today, I'm grieving the loss of my grandmother, but also celebrating her life and honoring the transition of her journey. I wrote this piece about how I found yoga and why I'm now teaching a few days ago. somewhat different mood, but appropriately raw. 

yoga's the central core of the abundance in my life, and to make sense of where I am, it helps to understand where I've been.

today's the day that I start telling my story

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yoga saved my life twice.

not my physical life, but it saved my well-being, in a huge way, twice. I started practicing as far back as 2005, but it was a broken engagement in 2009 that sent me looking for relief. not enlightenment, just a respite from the madness. I was a broke-ass grad student, so I got some groupons around town, and even started volunteering then working at the desk of a local hot yoga studio so I could practice daily. I know not everyone loves hot yoga, but when I got in there, I swear bullshit just melted off me. out my pores and away. and in that insanely hot room, I often found emotion move, pain dissipate, and in the end, quiet. every single time I walked out of a class I felt immense relief, lightness, and a sense that shit was ok. and eventually it came clear that I was leaving each class with a sense of something bigger; bigger than the ups and downs of life, even bigger than a fucked up breakup, and whatever it was, was so awesomely big that all the other shit seemed small. and that was ok by me.

I did a lot of other types of classes, and even ventured into the world of Kundalini (again, via a groupon). Kundalini is honestly kind of nuts for anyone who has never done it. you do all kinds of crazy stuff, standing on one leg doing breath exercises and then jumping all around like a weirdo and god knows what else. but I swear, when I walked out of that room, and even while I was in there, this sense of expansiveness just overtook me. any day that I took a Kundalini class, I felt like I was totally connected to all beings. in peace and harmony, for real. like nothing could touch me.

 

I was like, I don't give a fuck what it is, I'll stand on my head and bark like a dog if it makes me feel like this.

one day I went surfing after Kundalini and I swear I was one with the ocean, sky, sun, and all the fucking dolphins. it was really something.

I always loved the teachers that had something to say. like some really legit nugget of wisdom. it would carry me for days while I was otherwise bent over a computer, pounding away at some crazy academic thing. and that was it for quite some time, although somewhere in my brain I logged the idea of yoga teacher training. which is fitting, being the eternal student that I was. I figured at some point I would like to know what an Om is, and what the "real" history of the practice is. one day I met a real character of a teacher, an ex-figure skater who cursed while she taught with a heart of gold. she trained at a place called yoga barn in bali. years later, two different friends came back from non-yoga related trips to bali, and said, "you should really check out this place called Yoga Barn. you'd love it." so that was three, and duly noted.

but I imagined I'd go some day after making my riches from some job that emerged from somewhere post-PhD. after I'd handled my serious shit. so I kept practicing, and kept finishing the PhD, and finished the PhD, and kept practicing, and thank god, because otherwise I would have lost my damn mind. PhD's are gnarly. and getting birthed out into the world with a full head and no idea what the fuck you're doing is also gnarly. and then many things happened, and I finally decided to pull the trigger and go to the magical place called Bali. actually, weirdly, with no expectations of anything. I'd been so stripped down by all the things by that point, I didn't give I shit. I wanted only to do a lot of yoga and learn some stuff and be in some delicious other place.

so I went. and yoga saved my life for the second time.

it was like, "hey, dickhead. you think you know. you think you know, but you have no idea." and then I shedded layers and layers, happily. well, in a ragged puddle, but gratefully and almost gleefully in a twisted way. it was a safe place to let it rip. oh hello, family expectations. hi there, masks we wear. what's that you're storing in your thigh muscles? immense grief and anger from whateverthehell? let it go. let it rip. and I learned what it means to ground. and I learned what it means to center. and I learned what it means to hold space for myself and hold space for someone else. and I learned that we're all afraid. and when given the space we weep, intensely, on the floor. and I learned that while each one of us can only walk our own path, we can help each other along.

I learned how to both surrender and how to support my own weight. it was really something.

and I found a way to start to find a way toward actual, for real, self-love. self-love is a squirrely, elusive fucker. as soon as we think we have it nailed, it's off somewhere else and we're giving ourselves a hard time for no apparent reason. it's the worst. because everything good flows from it and it's almost impossible as a human to keep a handle on. but it's worth the try. because trying makes everything better. it makes ev-ery-thing better. and the simplest thing like breathing can help get us there. that's what I now teach. I'm far from an expert in anything, but I've done enough of this work and had enough good come from it for myself, that I feel completely compelled to share the wealth. so here I am.

and today, with a grieving heart, I turn to my practice again, this time as both teacher and student. the healing that I do transforms into helping others heal. and I now have a service to provide that brings real value into people's lives, and abundance into my own: financial, spiritual, and emotional.

abundance in all things, I believe, flows from nourishing the body and the soul. 

erinmcmorrow.com/yoga

#30daysofabundance

3 minute de-stress exercise

are you like me and hunched over at your computer like egore? yeah. try this.

at your desk:

• close your eyes. if that would make you look like a weirdo at work, just focus. feet on the ground. turn your attention inward. find the midline that goes from the ground up through the top of your head.
• take the attention that's been flying back and forth between the computer screen, your eyeballs, and your brain and bring it into your body. feel your feet.
• breathe. inhale deeply, feeling the breath move down into your low belly. exhale slowly and feel the breath move up through the midline and out the top of your head. imagine your nervous system calming with each breath.
• check in with your jaw and face muscles. relax.
• relax tops of shoulders. on an inhale, shrug shoulders up and and little forward. exhale, roll them back around and slowly down and draw the tips of your shoulder blades down and out to the sides. repeat as needed.
• remember that you are a soul having a human experience and it's all good.

even better:: stand up and go outside. take your shoes off if you can.

• find your midline and find a comfortable standing position.
• feel all four corners of your feet on the ground. see if you can imagine back body meeting front body, whatever that means to you.
• you can do all the above exercises here.
• inhale circle arms to the sky, then hands to prayer. do this a few times with breath.
• on an exhale, bending knees slightly, gently fold forward, focusing on the muscles in your legs rather than your back for support. relax back, engage legs a little and breathe. if you have any pain at all, STOP, and just do the standing breathing exercises.
• let your head hang, release neck. release whatever crazy energy you're hanging onto into the ground.
• inhale, gently return to standing, engaging legs, easy on back.
• take arms straight out to either side, palms facing out away from you. with breath, close a fist with each hand, finger by finger. thumb, forefinger, middle, right, pinky.
• rotate wrists around and do the same thing with palms facing in.
• return to the breath down to the lower belly and back up.
• look at the sky. take another breath. go back to work all zenned out.

this also works if you're not not working at a computer at all, but your kids are screaming at you or what have you. 

remember you are loved.

namaste.

grounded

I've been off the grid for a while. as a mini-update, I've returned from Bali with clarity and a ferocious sense of purpose. right now I'm on top of a mountain, on organic farmland, in a cabin by myself. I do yoga and drink beers on the roof, overlooking an enormous valley with a river. my stuff is in storage, my cat is with a friend, and I'm now a self-funded writer, teacher, and entrepreneur. 

the book I'm writing is my soul's calling and primary project. I've also recently co-founded and soft-launched a new project called Grounding Arts, including my first retreat. soon I'll be working to set up an international sustainability non-profit. details on everything forthcoming.

each project represents creative work, self-care, and service. my focus is on grounding, connection, and abundance. to say the least, I feel profoundly grateful and inspired. super exciting times and tons of good stuff coming soon.

Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

mushrooms can save the world!

the soil story

Here are the basics:

The soil is alive!

It's full of microbes that do amazing things, like help plant roots receive more nutrients from the ground (see mycorrhiza fungi). Soil that is not alive with these microbes is called dirt. Soil grows food; dirt grows nothing. Soil stores carbon via this microbial life, and also purifies and stores water.

Also important to note: we also have living microbes in our bodies, mostly in our gut. In fact, we have 10:1 microbial DNA to human DNA in our bodies. Meditate on that when you realize:

When we spray chemical insecticides on soil, we kill these microbes. Food grown in insecticides and then eaten, keeps killing our good gut microbes once eaten. Food grown from unhealthy soil also contains less nutrition. It's possible to grow an orange with little to no Vitamin C!

Dead soil also does not store water and allows for polluted industrial and urban runoff.

Soil that dies releases carbon into the atmosphere, greatly exacerbating global warming. Healing our soil does the reverse: it sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.

We need to heal our soil in order to:

1) sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere!

2) store and purify water!

3) restore nutrients to the food we grow and eat!

We heal our soil by composting organic matter, and by repopulating microbial populations with soil amendments. 

Soil to be healed at the new garden space in Venice

a new chapter

In 2013, I wrapped up my dissertation after two years of research and writing, and with it, my PhD in Urban Planning at USC. I had been working on my PhD for six years, with three years of coursework, one year of qualifying, and two years of dissertation writing. Throughout my time at USC, I served as a research and teaching assistant with different professors and research centers. I also launched a writing project, www.mindwithmatter.com, wrote a monthly column with Bamboo Magazine, and worked on The Right to Know, Label GMO campaign in California.

Over the last six months, I've been working on a passion project with a group of friends around soil health, compost, and urban gardening. The non-profit arm of the group is now called Kiss the Ground, and we've raised seed funding to launch our signature campaign: we want to tell The Soil Story.

I'm turning my focus from the core organizational work that I've been doing, to urban policy around compost, starting with Los Angeles. At the same time, I'm directing my attention toward international urban consulting, where I can continue to work on soil health as well as other urban sustainability issues. 

This blog will be a window into my projects and doings in this new chapter. I''ll also share information, resources, and any other goodies related to my work.