Is April the Cruelest Month?

It's April 15th and all of my daffodils are filled with snow, bowing their golden heads down and waiting to rise again into the warmth and sweetness of sunlight, with the rest of us.

Ever since I began to plan my transition into Down Dog Yoga Center, I have had lots of lists of things needed; picking out frangipane and sage as my paint colors was the first thing, and I brought my biggest and heaviest massage table, of course, and even invested in a new bookshelf, and a nice chair for my clients to settle into and have a cup of tea, if they want, before receiving a massage.  However, the one thing that I have quietly and eagerly waited to do happened yesterday.  I've been open for two weeks and gave 13 sessions last week alone, but I knew that my vision would only be complete when I could bring a flower from my yard and place it in a little vase in the therapy room for my clients to enjoy.  And so it was that as I was leaving for 9:00 a.m. session yesterday, I noticed that the daffodils had arrived.

So, even though the snow arrived under a pink moon last night, there was one bright daffodil that I managed to save, and to bring to my new therapy room yesterday.  As I walked from my car with it in the grey light of morning it shone as if lit from within, and it is currently standing proud and strong in a little antique blown glass bud vase that I found while garage sailing with my Busia (Polish for grandmother) twenty years ago (and yes, I know "sailing" is a funny way to put it but it kind of felt like sailing, riding around with my Busia in her big old burgundy Buick, searching for treasures in the springtime).

T.S. Eliot said: April is the cruelest month.*  Besides the Springtime tidings of renewal that April brings, we may also be vividly reminded of past loved ones who have passed away, of beautiful moments that will never again shine on the altars of our present lives.  Lilacs will ever remind me of just two days of one Springtime many years ago, after I and a number of other students had overwintered in a barely insulated cottage while at college in Southampton, Long Island.  We lived on the edge of a nature preserve and could see deep blue waters on the horizon from the second story, and lilacs seemed to be growing under every window, and the ocean breeze (and honestly, my own hands) bore the lilacs into our rooms and hearts and turned everything softly purple like a new dawn.  At the time I was planning on going to India and my friends were gathered together in a house filled with memories for the last time ever, and I'm so glad to have that memory nestled in my heart, which has grown big with memories and love intermingled.   T.S. Eliot was not the only one to make this connection between Spring time and mourning - also Walt Whitman's poem comes to mind, "When lilacs last in the door yard bloom'd."**

Today, I remember very much the Easter lilies that my uncle, Joe, always bought for my Busia.  He was her only surviving son of four (sons).  Every year she would set out her Ukrainian painted Easter eggs and the lilies would weigh down the lace covered corner of her dining room table in her tiny house, in front of lace curtains.  The sun would dance through the opened windows and lightly moving curtains, causing beautiful patterns to dance on and around the powerful Easter lilies, who would only sigh their sweet aromatherapy into the living room and kitchen on either side of them.  It has been several years since Busia's passing, that great lady who built the strongest connections with everyone who loved her. The bitter sting of loss has abated over the past couple of years, while I remember her with respect and love. I think it is fitting that I brought my little bud vase - which she once encouraged me to purchase with my hard earned dusting money - to work.

One of my clients yesterday was feeling sad, because someone she loved very much had passed away a year ago that day.  Although my support was virtually wordless, I was listening, and I did my best to hold the space for her with love and deep understanding in my soul.  She loved the daffodil so much, and even found a way to laugh in the midst of her sadness.  She inspired me so very much that day.

We Michiganders are a resilient bunch, and we know that we can't have light without darkness, and we can't have love without loss.  But true loss, the loss of a loved one, is possibly the worst thing that can happen to anyone.  Awful cold weather and scraping our cars off mid-April doesn't make anything easier, and for moments April really is the cruelest month, bringing with it a deluge of snow and sadness.  But in the end, this little snowscape will do nothing to stop us from collectively smiling even brighter, and opening our souls to new memories even as we honor the old.
                                                                             
                                                                                   ***

I heard the most beautiful piece of music on the radio the other day, called Musica Celeste.  It is played on strings without pausing, with the effect of giving us just a taste of the Infinite.  The program brought tears to my eyes, it was so beautiful!  Here is a link to it, I heard just moments of it while driving, en route from watching the demolition of a condemned house and while going back to work.  If you have even one or two minutes only, you can taste it here:

http://performancetoday.publicradio.org/display/programs/2014/04/14/

In my search for that piece of music this morning, I ended up on the phone with the director of WMUK, and I explained (a little awkwardly) that I am a massage therapist looking for beautiful and meaningful classical music for my sessions, and I asked him for his personal ideas of classical music that might be calming and relaxing in the therapy room (I have so much modern massage music but sometimes people ask me for more classical, and it's hard to find calm classical music as classical music is often so passionate and loud!  Cannonballs and cymbals and tubas, oh, my!).  ...And so through this kindly and calm voiced gentleman I found Massanet, Arvo Part, and John Tavener (two John Taveners a few hundred years apart actually).  I got off of the phone and added it all to my collection, because life does continue to expand and I want to be open to that.  I didn't catch his name and I didn't give him mine, but I'm so grateful to him for sharing his thoughts. One never knows what another person might want to hear on the massage table.

See you soon - in the sunlight!

*Reference to The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot, found here:  http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html
**Reference to a poem by Walt Whitman, found here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174748

April 6th, 2014

Relocation with Gratitude

Happy Spring!  

I spent a good part of yesterday hanging pictures with my husband at my new therapy room, at Down Dog Yoga Center!  I've relocated my massage practice - although I am still giving my Wednesdays to a local spa and salon to help them with the transition, I will soon be available six days - rather than just five - at Down Dog Yoga Center.  Please see my home page of my website for more information!  

After practicing in my home office - first as a student, and then as a certified practitioner, and as of March 2013 as a licensed practitioner - for a total of three years, and at a local salon for over a year, I have spent the past week moving my practice into a therapy room of my very own at the new Down Dog Yoga Center! 

Down Dog Yoga Center is ten walkable/cyclable blocks from my home in the Vine Neighborhood, which makes me feel more rooted than ever. I have completed this business transition only with the blessing of my sacred community, and so I must give thanks to my wonderful experiences at Sangha Yoga, teachers Karina Ann Mirsky, Jerry Givens, Anne Beattie, Marne (her Candlelight Yoga is amazing!), Kama Mitchell, Jessica Grosel, and so many others at Sangha, and also to Gina Green (my first certified hatha yoga teacher!), and many, many others whose work helped to guide me to the present moment, and to my childhood spiritual guides for helping me find my way into the last several years, which have been powerful and wonderful.

Teachers at Down Dog Yoga Center whose work I can already speak to are Kristin Fiore, Suzie Batdorff, and Kyle Thompson.  I look forward to continuing to take many more classes from our beautiful yoga community and to be able to share my favorite aspects of them.  It means a lot to me to be able to share some of my favorite aspects of my life right here.  Thank you!  

Great Fruit! Hell Hath No Fury (Speaking of Pomegranates), and More

Great Fruit!  

It's been a long time since my last post, and that is because everything that I wanted and more came to fruition.  All of the dreams posted last January merged or metamorphosed into bigger dreams, and generally became more fruit-like and less dried seed.  Especially the dream to WORK HARDER.  Boy howdy, did that dream turn into a gigantic pomegranate.  A delicious and intimidating thing to approach, but there I was, eating up ideas, like ruby red juice filled pomegranate seeds, and getting more deeply committed to nearly everything in which I became involved.

Business is...

Booming!  Well, kind of, that's kind of true.  And it's kind of not true, too.  It's all perspective, all ebb and flow.  I was very busy in the months leading up to the Christmas season, but now things have calmed a bit and I'm trying to figure out what it is that I should be doing during this lull.  How can I work up to my goal, of serving 15-20 clients per week?  Because for this massage therapist, that would be full-time.  The time I put into each session before and after (SOAP charting and planning potential next steps), the studying and research that I do, the marketing (my weakest point), classes, etc. amounts to that number of clients being very important to my role as a support.  

A local business owner - who is a sweetheart with a highly successful and time-honored massage therapy practice - kindly advised me to always remember to take careful stock of my overhead, or the funds that I need to pay out in order to keep my business going, and to use that knowledge to help me breathe.  She said that in her experience, looking at that number and knowing she was floating was enough for her to trust that it would unfold, things continued to fall into place.  Another very established practitioner told me that I was going to be O.K., and to trust in the Universe.  So, I admit it, even though I have so much for which to be grateful, I'm still needing to remind myself to just be in the present and trust.  I'm still learning trust as an intentional practice.  But Trust is earned, right?  But it would be silly not to trust at this point.  I bet I could write down a thousand reasons to be grateful, right now, without lifting pen from paper to pause for more than a few breaths.  But that doesn't mean that I don't occasionally look upon the deeps that I've fabricated so well and tense up just a little bit, like a little ship bracing for a hurricane that doesn't exist.  Right at this moment, I'm floating, and reaching up into the clouds, and for a minute there, I felt a little like flying, but all it takes is the sight of sparkling waves to make me feel that way.  

A great teacher named Mansi once told me, when you raise a sail, you have to deepen a keen.  I'm still mulling over that.   

In October, I was so happy when I was in South Bend for a three day weekend learning practical applications of Myofascial Release (John Barnes).  I remember walking through a skyway from my hotel on the way to class and thinking that this learning, this deepening of knowledge and practice of support is what it's all about.  And the Thai dinner with three other massage therapists from other states, sharing ideas and supporting each other, that was just a treat.  I miss it and hope to attend the next workshop of that ilk in August, if I can afford it.  However, there are some great massage therapists in this fair city, and I am delighted to be growing alongside them.  

Also, there are small business taxes... this tax season I completed my first full year of business and so taxes are truly daunting right now, and I'm learning how to perhaps keep better books than before.  

Expansion

I need to give a shout out to the Notawasseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi - by stating that after volunteering for them for a little bit there, they hired me, and they were very generous, and as my last post so long ago spoke of how fulfilling it was for me to volunteer with them, I feel I should also share that I was in the end most generously paid for my efforts.  

I have been working at local spa - last spring, I began renting a space at Sheri's Fine Salon and Spa on Gull Rd.  I met Sheri through Frankie Holzbach, who with Sue Jones taught a fascinating five week course in the medicinal properties and potential contraindications of essential oils.  The expansion has been great for business, as I ended up nearly doubling the amount of sessions that I gave at my home therapy room last year.  I gave just over 140 sesssions last year, though my client base has remained small and close to my heart.  

I'm still working out of both places.  I have remained the only (licensed) massage therapist at Sheri's, and the room has been occupied by none but me, so it's lovely to have that space and keep the energy the way that feels right to me.  If there were more clients than I could handle, I could only share a room with someone who shared my energy and respect for the space.  The only challenging thing about practicing in two places is that I have to carrry everything with me, not only my SOAP charting and books and resources for my clients, but also my essential oils and product list of organic and healthy creams, lotions, and carrier oils, and of course my music, and square reader, because I also still practice at home, and I prefer to have all of that with me when I give a session.  I have developed the simplest of systems to aid me in this constant endeavor, and it involves many small bags going into a larger bag.  Once in awhile, I forget something.  

Hell Hath No Fury (Speaking of Pomegranates)

A little off topic here, but I made mention of pomegranates earlier, and certainly I am not alone in that I can't eat a pomegranate without thinking of the Greek myth of Persephone, who ate pomegranate seeds and became somehow bound by this act to leave the earth and spend part of each year with Hades (who managed the mythical Greek underworld).  In one story, her mother Demeter was so upset by this abduction that she drew her soft white mantle over the Earth and fell asleep, awaiting her daughter's return.  Ah, pretty, sparkling snow... In another story, Demeter simply refused to let anything grow as long as her daughter was in the underworld (Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned).  And so the earth began to grow cold, and it went on for just too long, and eventually, Hades had to let Persephone the Pomegranate Eater go back up for the better part of each year, and that's when Spring arrived, and why, ancient Greeks reasoned, it continues to follow Winter.  Either way, I think Persephone's story is a representation of budding, growth, harvest, and rest (among other things) and it occurs to me that this Winter we've been given here in southwestern Michigan, so wild and full and furiously driven, has given me the gift of time, for the moment in fact, I'm snowed in without my snowshoes.  

Spring is Coming

I remember when Winter Was Coming, and I had to stop watching "Game of Thrones" because the White Walkers were just waaaaaaay too much for me.  I also had to stop blogging, even though people seemed to like it.  I just didn't hardly know what to say.

"Wordly power mean nothing.  Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters."  - Rumi

Hopefully I will be better about keeping this blog updated, struggling with the fact that vulnerability is a tough thing to share.  That, however, is probably not what Rumi meant by "unsayable." Hmmm...

What Dreams Made Come

Although it seems really unheard of now, dreams of last year - of merely planting the beautiful Virginian "Painted Lady" or "Sweet Pea" on a trellis - seemed, for a minute in March, to have manifested - if not in the flowering of that actual seed - as an opportunity to move to Virginia within a month of that post, of which we had no inkling before.  I brought a couple of rocks back from a hike we took off of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, and prayed for my husband Paul to get the job, at least just because clearly he would be an asset and I would hate to see him get turned down, and he was offered the job, but it wasn't right for him, and in the end, we chose to stay and to put our roots in deeper into Kalamazoo.  We are officially not stuck here.  We like living here, and are so invested here, and it is because leaving would not be the right thing to do that it would be difficult.  I believe that any major move has to have passion behind it.  Otherwise it's just awful.  And the moral of the story is, I'll be very careful when I order seeds next month!  Native flowers only!  I'm kidding, mostly.  Not one-hundred-percent-ly.  What is certain is that we are happy here, and we have come to realize that Kalamazoo has everything we want to support, and everything we need to be supported, and we like running into good souls everywhere here, just by taking a walk downtown.    

Volunteering 

Oh!  Grace Hospice!  I was working to get orientated into Grace Hospice last I wrote, mentioned that I had to take two TB tests and a drug test and never blogged since then.  Passed the tests of course, became a volunteer, and in July even took the TB test(s) again to satisfy some bureaucratic issue they were having, and generally I became fully orientated... and eventually, decided not to do that anymore.  That said, volunteering for Grace Hospice was fulfilling at points, and some very affirming moments, however I never could seem to be able to give as much time to it as was necessary for me to give to feel invested in their program, so last Fall while in between patients I finally admitted - to myself and to them - my express need to stop volunteering there.  The experience and the training were invaluable, and I met some wonderfully spiritual people, and got to be a part of the dying process and to give adaptive massage in the form of Comfort Touch and Geriatric Massage.  I got to share knowledge and write extensively about this type of massage as Grace had not offered massage in an organized way before, and this was a new branch for the national corporation.  I learned that I am comfortable and grounded with the process of grieving, death and dying, and I'm happy to really know solidly that I can work with the dying.  And, I think it will be something that I pick up again when I am not dancing into so many circles.  And I just don't know when that will be.  I've seen dancers in their 90's... In the end, I must admit that I had a feeling it wasn't the right space for me, for the long run, but listening to that inner voice is to take some more practice, perhaps. 

And, I found Open Doors.  

http://www.opendoorskalamazoo.org/

Open Doors is a ministry in our community that helps people find the ground, get back on their feet and begin to realize their potential, and it works.  Once per month for the past year and a half, my neighbor Katie and I have worked together to prepare a homecooked meal for our local women's shelter, accommodating from 3-10 women at Next Door, which is an affiliate of Open Doors.  I can think of no worthier cause and I'm thrilled that Katie found it so many moons ago.  Options for volunteering included tutoring, renovating and/or painting houses, cooking, etc.  Cooking for (and sometimes, with) the ladies at Next Door has become my favorite volunteer opportunity ever.  To make a home cooked meal with love, and then to get to sit with the ladies and enjoy this meal together, is a sacred honor, and quite a lot of fun.  They're wonderful souls, brilliant, and alive with the desire to grow.  They all work so very hard.  No one works harder than them, that's for sure.  One can not attempt a more Herculean feat than to change, to let go of what doesn't serve us, and to grow stronger and in time, happier.  These ladies have inspired me every month.  I believe that growing - and changing into what we are meant to be - takes great courage, and requires the ability to know and accept where we are calling from.  That's the kind of power that these women exemplify, time after time, and that's what Next Door supports.

Volunteering in the Vine

Since my last post, my garden was planted in curved raised beds, but the Sweet Peas never came up.  I learned how to make strawberry jam thanks to a neighbor, and my street was - by the power of community - lit up by the raising (and electric wire burying) of beautiful post-lanterns with colorfully individualized, resident chosen stained glass (Kokomo glass) panels.  Thanks first and foremost to funding from the Vine Neighborhood Association and the LISC foundation, and the months of work grant writing (we got rejected at a banquet once, and that was disappointing but a good experience) and door knocking, and thanks also to resident and volunteer support.  Thanks to Frank and Mary at Peepers Stained Glass - bless their hearts - who cut all the glass for us and were really helpful, donating a lot of their time.  It made it more complicated, but people really liked being able to pick out their own colors to express their own individual tastes.  People joked it would look a "candy-cane lane," but at night, the lights are bright enough so that they don't look very different from one another - and by day they proudly display their art glass colors.  Ours is textured, and streaked with purple and cream!  The togetherness of the work days - as well as the unification that is represented by the lights - that is why it was a community project - we worked together, and got to know each other even better, and we showed that we can do strong things together, and we can defend our street when we need to.  Also thanks to Building Blocks for initially pulling Paul and I in and showing us that "here" is a place of tremendous potential for growth, "here" is a great place to be.  Also thanks to volunteer labor, licensed electrician Todd Urness, and contractor Rob Barnard, and Kim Cummings, who has taught me to always look for an Other way to do things, and pretty much, to never to accept impossibility as an option when people's lives can be improved. 

After resting on our laurels for a few months (we were tired!) during which time our donated meeting place turned into an rented apartment with a new great neighbor,  we took to hosting monthly neighborhood meetings at my home, which makes more sense anyway.  Once the snow melts, please venture out to see what new things we're doing to revitalize our street!  There are resources out there to help us grow our dreams, possibly due to the new medical school going up by the Alamo Drafthouse Theater, and the new Wellness and Sustainability campus going up on the Crosstown.  And the lovely Vine Neighborhood awaits its future breathlessly.  It's an old neighborhood with a history of beauty and art and truth, and I love it because it is one of the most real and striving places I have ever seen.    

MBLEX
I passed the MBLEX.  The Massage and Bodyworks Licensing Examination.  I passed it, and got my license.  Last March.  That's it for now.

Dreaming

I am dreaming of more pomegranate seeds, and less prose.