Community Inspirations
I am stoked to share some of what my students and amazing community comes up with in connection with all kinds of things–blog posts, yoga classes, Rumi quotes, whatever.
Here’s an art piece by Toni Codgell, an artist from the UK who was inspired by the article Why Lying Broken on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea:
Janet Muniz, an award-winning writer who came to a recent Creative Flow workshop with me at Maya Whole Health, wrote this in our workshop:
www.sagelandcreative.com
Brain, my friend,
I’m all around you. Why do you close your eyes?
We’re the ebb and the flow, simpatico
Our lives are intertwined, like the grape and the vine
When Body is in the Gap
you’re the Red Arrow and I’m the White Room.
Come on, hold my hand. You hum, I’ll sing.
~Your loving Heart
Written during Creative Flow with Julie Peters, Maya Whole Health, Renton WA –February 2012
And Greg H wrote me an email the other day after reading my love letter to men entitled To All the Men I’ve Ever Known and to Those I Haven’t Met Yet: I Want You To Know 10 Things: In this love letter, I exhort the reader to speak up, so Greg did, with a beautiful poem:
That crease there,
in your lip,
I am lost there forever
The bumpers of your mouth,
built to perfectly absorb
a collision with
my own
Maybe it’s just because
it’s where the sound of your
beautiful words
comes from
But that mouth of yours
It appears
as an Eden
to me
Please…just a simple kiss
will surely dissolve
all troubles
and time
Natalie is a wonderful student who has been practising with me for a while now, and attended my Creative Flow workshop at
Highgate YYOGA this past December. Her poem gives me goosebumps:
I participated in a yoga and creative writing workshop today with one of my favorite teachers and poets, Julie Peters. It was epic. The workshop was called Creative Flow: The Poetry of Yoga. We listened to some poetry, then we moved a bit, then we wrote a bit, then we moved some more… then I wrote this:
IN MY BELLY
There is a hard stone in my belly.
It is nestled in the dirt below my ribcage
warm
safe
and comfortable.
Sometimes
a little seed will take root in there.
But the stone is jealous of the way it touches the dirt
spreads its tendrils out and caresses
my hips
my ribs
my kidneys
tickling my heart
pushing its leaves into the space in my lungs.
The stone just has to move
just a little
and the earth will tumble
mix
turn to mud
and the little sprout will drown.
And the tiny growing thing that is no longer growing will drape itself over my insides
and smother them so that the rock can again be
warm
safe
and comfortable.
Each time a little seed takes root I think:
Maybe this time the sprout will be stronger.
Maybe its roots will be sneaky, and they will know enough
to caress the stone instead of my liver.
They will tickle it until it feels safe and lets a root in.
It will only take one.
And that root will dig
ever deeper
until it makes a crack
and then a crevice
and then the stone will split and shatter and become one with the earth that it has been
so jealous of
for so long.
But no.
The stone has seen the sprout for what it is.
It has turned its back
and once again the little green thing
has died.
After I wrote this, I sucked up the guts to read it out loud for everyone to hear. My voice shook. I felt like I had let something out of the box that I usually keep closed, and it felt good. Thanks Julie.
Wow, thank you Natalie! <3