Tag Archives: downsizing

Wheeeee! We’re Alive – Dancing like it’s 2010

Posted on December 21, 2009 | 5 Comments

A Merry Solstice to All! One of my favorite InterPlay forms is DOBO (Dancing On Behalf Of) and in this morning’s Wheeee! tele-fun call, we danced on behalf of where we will invest our attention and energy in the coming year.

The Winter Solstice marks the darkest day of the sun cycle and like the new moon, it’s an opportunity to reflect and then hit the “Reset Button” on our lives through intentionality and action.  We humans are creatures of energy and since we are gifted with discernment and higher consciousness, we can invest our energy in making stuff happen locally, in our lives and communities, and in positive support of what we want to transform in our world.

Are you ready to Dance On Behalf Of 2010?

Here we go…putting your left hand in the air, take a breath and sense the connection to your visionary right brain.  Breathe into that connection until it feels clear and strong.  Now notice your hand’s response to that connection – moving, dancing, shaping, finding stillness.  Breathe and sigh again, relaxing into the dance and lightly noticing – you might visit places, people, ideas.  Allow any sounds that arise to have voice.  After a minute or two, find a place of stillness to end.

Journal to reflect and gather up your experience.  Finish your journal entry with a 3-sentence story or by drawing an image.

Now, to ground this vision in the current moment, write down what you are dancing on behalf of this week.

And there’s nothing quite like the power of being witnessed, so I recommend that you communicate this intention to someone you know.  Call them up. Have a cup of tea together. Email them if needed.  Just make your statement out loud to another human being.  To Change Our Lives, We Have To Change Our Practice!

And lastly, I offer a Wordle of all that this morning’s Wheeeee! participants are dancing on behalf of in this new year.  Enjoy!


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Posted in Dealing with Change, personal growth, Playful Practices, Reinventing Self

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Wheeeee! We’re Alive! – Thanks and Giving

Posted on November 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

Each Monday morning since September 28, a small band of us have been breathing, sighing, singing, humming, dancing and playing with big life questions, and each other, in the virtual playspace of a teleconference call. Wheeeee! We’re Alive! is my weekly free gift to the community accessible by telephone from wherever you happen to be - 30 minutes of play to spark the depths and delights of being human.  One ongoing participant recently shared her experience:

…the simple exercises and reminders help me stop, listen and discover.  I have been pleasantly suprised each time to find spontaneous, authentic answers to the questions posed that I would not have found by simply thinking about them.  Thanks for helping me return to myself in ways that are easy to forget these days. (H.J. – Austin, TX)

This past Monday, we explored the question What am I ready to release? Profound responses surfaced through brief meditation and a simple hand dance. We wondered together at our realizations that possessions and life’s documentation can bog us down in “who we have been”, and even inhibit us from embracing “who we are becoming”.  Breathing to expand our physical sense of spaciousness, we considered how we can let go with the same ease as exhaling.  Anticipating yesterday’s Thanksgiving holiday, we also affirmed the cyclical connection between releasing, giving, receiving and acknowledging gratitude.

You too are invited to play! Wheeee! We’re Alive is freely given and open to everyone. Registration is simple – click here.  Keep your call-in number and PIN to join in every Monday. Calls continue into 2010. Hope to connect with you on our November 30 call.

Joyfully yours, Nika


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Posted in Reinventing Self

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your eyes are bigger than your stomach

Posted on October 16, 2009 | Leave a comment

Enough as a teaching has always been rooted both in spirituality and in pragmatism.  Spiritually it’s releasing from what Buddhists call  “the hungry ghost” – that aspect of self that is always trying to incorporate more from the outside to satisfy a spiritual emptiness. - Vicki Robin

I sat on the sun-warmed dirt in a field thatched with wild strawberries, my face, hands and t-shirt smeared andstrawberries speckled with juicy redness.  Eyes closed, my little tummy sated and my greedy desires quenched.  At 5 years old, I rarely stopped myself from anything and had no definition of “enough.”  Even though I learned before that on the walk home with my sisters, the skin on my stomach would develop a rash that burned and itched, I had ducked out of the house and followed them, avoiding my mother’s attempts at control.  I wanted what I wanted – the sweet delight on my tongue, to have as much of pleasure as I could bear.  I ate myself sick because the enjoyment of the journey was worth it.  And because my family was so unhappy, I was attracted to anything that gave me joy.

Maybe it’s because I was a greedy little girl that now I’m so invested in reforming my consumeristic ways. Although I’ve traveled pretty broadly, coming of age and living in the U.S., I know I lack some data, some sense of scale, as I wrestle with how I determine what is”Enough” in my life – enough money, enough stuff, enough insurance and other forms of stability-seeking.  I’m aware that we Americans constitute 5% of the world’s population but consume 24% of the world’s energy.  I’m also trying to do this work without using the cattle prod of guilt. How can I stay clear and conscious and motivated?  Here are a few fundamentals I practice:

  • Nurture my self-esteem and confidence. I still notice that when I’m going to an event where I won’t know a lot of people or feel uncertain, I want something new to wear.  It’s as if I need a suit of armor or some kind of “comfort blanket” in order to show up in an unknown environment.  If instead, I pamper my body a bit, put together an outfit I like out of clothes I already own, and spend some time breathing and mentally centering myself before entering the event, I’m good to go. My connections and reputation are not based on acquisitions, but on the substance of who I am.  One of the keys to outgrowing our dependence on consumerism as a crutch for identity and status is grappling with our own insecurities.
  • Fulfill my pleasure quotient.  InterPlay has taught me to “notice the good” in a very embodied, sensory way and to have more of it.  The Slow Movement is encouraging us in this direction also – slow down and sensorily experience your environment, food, conversations, musings. Fill yourself up with the pleasures of the moment and the day. When I’m “full” in this way, I find that acquisition is not very important and I’m even more willing to identify and release what I have more than enough of.
  • Enjoy more than enough friends. Whenever I’m with friends, I’m one of the richest women in the world.  We have so much together – creativity, laughter, support – and are willing to share what we own.  This weekend a bunch of us are doing the annual clothes swap, including potlucking and much playful making up of outfits.  Afterwards, the collected clothes, accessories and household items are taken to various women’s shelters and dress-for-work programs.  We never have to decide how many friends is Enough.

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Posted in Dealing with Change, personal growth, Sustainable Living

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Becoming Berry Bushes

Posted on September 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

Say you take a field and plow it up completely. The first species that come in – called “type one” – are weeds…Type-one species are pioneers, and we humans have been a pioneer species, going from open field to open field instead of learning how to live in one place, recycle everything, and develop symbiotic relationships.

Biomimicry expert Janine Benyus, The Sun, Sept. 09

Nestling into Saturday breakfast and coffee on the deck this morning, I read The Sun’s interview with Benyus, founder of the Biomimicry Institute whose mission is to promote imitating nature as we solve human design problems.  They run Ask Nature.org where you can query How would Nature (fill in your action statement describing what you want to do) – I asked about making cement and learned about protozoans that produce and use a protein cement to stick to rocks.

What really struck a spark for me in this article, since I’m coaching humans and not just now resolving engineering design problems, is what she says about humans shifting their strategies for ecosystem participation.  We’ve been following the weed strategy with shallow roots and seeds that blow all over, colonizing every opportunistic nook and cranny.  Benyus advises us to shift to a “type-two plant” strategy that perennials such as members of the berry family use i.e. “put down roots and hook up with other species.”  My personal strategy since the “weedy” 60s and 70s (when we who differed from tradition blew all over trying to find the utopia in which to root) has been to develop my “portable roots” – friends, skills, spiritual connection, talents, inner joy, wisdom – that sustain and are infinitely transferable.  Benyus inspires me to think of this as a transitional strategy somewhere between weed and berry bush.  And I realize that in the past year, when times have been tough in some ways, the weed in me wants to pull up those roots and blow away.  But I haven’t. I have become part of an ecosystem that I’m unwilling, and perhaps unable, to surrender.  There’s mutuality of sustenance that can’t be done without.

blackberry-bushWhat does it mean to be a human berry bush?  Visibility. Commitment. Humility. Honesty. Interdependence. Generosity. Willingness to receive. Resourcefulness. Roots that go down deep and find hidden resources even in dry spells.

Oh. Now I’ve made myself hungry for cobbler and not a berry in the house.

Later on in the day…

Another downsizing action “in the field” (yes, they continue) – I went to my storage unit:

  • sorted through everything
  • identified boxes of paper to be shredded and put them in my car
  • tagged a bunch of stuff to go in next non-profit donation pickup
  • found my basket of musical instruments!
  • decided to use my son’s old metal headboard as a trellis in the garden
  • filled out all the paperwork and moved to a smaller storage room (savings $25 per month – wahoo!)

Came home absolutely filthy and reveled in a hot soapy shower (during which I washed two bras and a pair of pants).  I’m squeaky clean but still sense that I inhaled tons of industrial motes mingled with dirt and pigeon droppings.  I’m not convinced that my Neti Pot did the trick.

Visiting my storage room reminded me that I have 6 more chairs for the dining room table that I use as a desk in my cottage.  What am I saving them for?  I still have a vision of living in a bigger house shared with other good folks where this beautiful wood table and chairs will be the center of community gatherings.  So, once again, I committed to keeping it until then.

iGoogle tells me that the waning gibbous moon is now only 98% full.  Time for the food whose smell is wafting up from the kitchen and a well-earned class of wine.

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Posted in Dealing with Change, Reinventing Self

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Another solar return

Posted on August 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

“Pay attention, that’s all,” Eliza said. “Notice things. Connect what you’ve noticed. Connect it into a picture. Think of how the picture might be changed; and act to change it. Some of your acts may turn out to have been foolish, but others will reward you in surprising ways; and in the meantime, simply by being active instead of passive, you have a kind of immunity that’s hard to explain–”

– The Confusion, Neil Stephenson

I’m launching into this new endeavor on my 57th birthday because all my intuition, the signs and portents, won’t leave me alone.  I’ve been in this practice of re-inventing self for a lifetime already and there is a pattern.  Great chunks of reality start falling off the edifices around me, waking me up to paying close attention.  Then, things and people that I depended on for some sense of stability become undependable.  Mostly not intentionally or maliciously, they are just dealing with the cracking up of reality too, in their own way.  Then, I have to assess which of my own creations, relationships, etc. are no longer alive and relevant for me (and perhaps even holding me back from seeing what needs to be born).  And I have to let go of some or all of them.  The next part always brings me a sense of awe because it really is magical. As soon as I voluntarily surrender what’s just been taking up space, a flood of insight and creative ideas pours into that empty space.  Often, I know just what to take action on.

Quirky Auntie’s “Sustainable Living” Room was such a gift from the universe (or wherever creativity springs from).

Ever since I left my last corporate job in 2002, I have been downsizing my material life, focusing on surfacing and putting into practice my deeply held values, and releasing my wild, creative self from all constraints (breaking through shell after shell after shell). Whew! Challenging and worthy work.  A couple of weeks ago, I realized I was in a breakdown-before-breakthrough place, everything felt weird and out of kilter making me very scared.  I was reading Thomas Berry’s The Great Work and found direction – my life choices and daily work needed to get fully aligned with The Great Work, “the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on the Earth to a more benign mode of presence.”

So what would that look like?  I started making a list.  I want to bring joy, wisdom and practical action in these times where the old structures and ways are crumbling.  I want to support people who are “right sizing” their finances and lifestyles, and especially those who are engaged in building a new, more sustainable world.  Even though I drive a hybrid, I want to travel and pollute less.  I want the excellent quality creative coaching I provide to be affordable and accessible.  I want to be valued and economically self-sufficient.  I want to feel delight in my work daily.

OK – off to make it so.  Need to do a business plan, invent a business model, determine a financial structure, and build a website.

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