Falling Gently Podcast

In a currency of Crisis With coins of anxiety and bills of outrage It’s challenging for a broker of Calm To assess the exchange rate. Crisis has become wildly inflated It is certainly being overprinted Which one would think would accelerate collapse But what to do until then? How to stabilize the market? Perhaps it’s easiest to cut off trade entirely But isolation and exclusion have long lines of...

One of the criteria for getting on the constant improvement escalator Is a commitment to getting a little better every day Which might seem like a natural process at first glance But is actually uni-directional and not representative of the cycles of nature A less popular orientation, but one I’ve come to value Is the letting-life-shape-me gyroscope Maybe bobbling, but finding my center and return...

It is easy to look at the world And have grievances At least for me And because that condition is so consistent And yet so at odds with the life I want to live I needed to explore it more Now, a lot of my writing seems to vilify the thinking mind And i don’t mean to do that Where my frustration lies Is in the thinking mind being primary in our culture When it is just a portion of our experience So...

I believe social activism is essential to a responsible life But I’ve had to change how I approach it I was out with clipboards and signs regularly Yet, very few of my chosen causes have been ultimately successful There’s a lot I don’t understand about how and why the world works the way it does And my part in it And I still go out and sit or stand with my sign But my real activism work is now on...

My friend once told me a story About a time early in her family’s life When they were constantly just a little behind financially Scrounging the couches and asking for extra hours to be able to buy diapers and formula After several years, they’d stabilized, and saved up to buy a house As they were moving She noticed the Maxwell House coffee cans they’d used as door stops To keep the breeze moving...

I have had an especially challenging day And this time, it’s impacted my ability to write First time in 70 days Dang. It does, however, give me a chance to share a story One I’m sure you know But the whole point of this exploration Is bringing to mind tools we might have forgotten we have And how we need each other To remind each other Today I need the story of the Chinese Farmer The one whose hor...

This life is not easy And sometimes it is so hard and confusing as to be unbearable Big things All around us And some days it’s just too much I’ve been feeling this in my own life And witnessing it in many others And for all of the resourcing And all of the self-regulation I practice It does not go away These resources do not ‘solve’ anything They soothe Soften Make me more able to bring a mature,...

“Do I contradict myself Very well then, I contradict myself I am large I contain multitudes” -Walt WhitmanMy inner compass is powerful I can generally feel my magnetic north And when my mind gets involved And talks me into a different orientation I almost always deeply regret it. So I’ve learned not to do that so much But even as I learn to be steadfast to what calls me I know that doesn’t mean th...

I believe something big is happening Quantum Probably galactic, but definitely planetary And I believe humans are a part of it But just a part Specifically, I believe that for all of our destructive and extractive behaviors Humans are not fully responsible for the change we’re undergoing I believe there’s so much more at play This soothes my nervous system Because the Mystery is very life-positive...

One of the most painful and corrosive habits I’ve had Has been trying to do the right thing Sounds crazy, right? Isn’t that what we’re always doing Using our intelligence and experience To move towards pleasure and away from pain To get the right answer And avoid the wrong one? I’ve come to realize It’s an enormous distraction for me It sets the world as a puzzle I’m trying to solve Instead of a w...

I’m very busy on a molecular level Whether I’m tending to my chores Or lying on the couch And I’ve decided to prioritize That natural, constant, underlying motion Of the dozen or so systems of my body Modeling harmony Working together With each other And with the dynamic inputs of the world To keep my heart beating And keep this organism In homeostasis It’s no small task But our bodies are excepti...

I woke up this morning to rain that lasted for hours In the middle of summer. In the desert. I think life is inviting me to set aside What I think I know To simply be And to witness its unfolding As my own Not based on my thoughts, or even my experience But rooted in openness - receiving and relating With ample space for surprise Did you know trees have pulses? We didn’t know it for the longest ti...

My nervous system is changed I’m more settled than I’ve been in some time Even as I stare down 100 boxes And seemingly endless odds and ends It might be entering a totally new biome It might be the intensity of practices these last months It might be sheer exhaustion Doesn’t really matter I’m appreciating the spaciousness Right here in the middle of my overwhelm Suddenly, I’m somatically comfortab...

Thank you for going on the Ganesha journey with me As I said, I’ve waited a long time to share it And transcribing it, and imbedding the reflections on it into my days These very specific and challenging days Has been simultaneously grounding and lightening We are moving today and tomorrow To Indio, near Palm Desert About 2 hours away That serves many of our purposes And all of the ones focused on...

It had been a pretty exciting week I knew I was in the middle of something I’d remember forever But I also had busy days with little kids And the days all kindof blended together And I hadn’t quite counted if it had been a full week So, the night after the equality lesson I tried to sit to meditate numerous times But my one year old had a fever And was up quite a bit By the time he settled I was t...

I went into meditation on the seventh night Full of frustrations about a variety of people and events And like the previous nights Whether deep meditation, or surface sitting After my chime rang I received a message, clear as a bell: We are all equal. All of us. Seriously. You can see my resistance to it was built into its structure. It’s so hard to hold this thought When you’re certain many peopl...

We’ve arrived at my favorite I mean, the first night was my favorite, too But of the body of work This one sang to me and still does I was not a patient person I sortof prided myself on my impatience I called it hutzpah Efficiency Care Motivation Activism Change needed to happen And ‘now’ was actually a little too late Whether it was social justice Or making dinner Chop, chop No time to waste Pati...

Night Five’s message was straightforward: “The best plans, by their nature, can always get better” Isn’t that novel? It invites a certain flexibility Openness Structure with fluidity I liked this one It was one of those things Once you heard it It’s impossible to unhear You can’t defend an old plan from a new idea that makes sense Just for the sake of ‘but it’s the plan!’ Don’t they say “Man makes...

I don’t think the average bear would’ve sensed this about me But second-guessing myself and how I was received Was one of the few sports I played And I played without rules, With a moving target, And rotating partners juggling multiple other games There were areas and people with whom I was more developed But my concern about being received negatively was deep I’d been the recipient of devastating...

This is my prayer to thee, my lord — Strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart. Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows. Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service. Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might. Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles. And give me the strength to surrender my streng...

The message on the first night of this journey “Where there is Love, Nothing Else Matters” Let me know and experience a possibility I’d only ever fantasized about Following it with “It does not have to be what you expect in order to be meaningful” Let that possibility take on infinite expressions As I sit here 18 years later, I realize I probably should’ve gotten a tattoo. It’s a lesson I invoke a...

So, after stepping into infinity And finding it spacious, welcoming, alive, and so loving Some things shifted in me I had gone into my first meditation invoking Ganesha with an agenda It had two taproots, one of my lifelong spiritual devotion And one of trying to accomplish something But I was immediately swept into love and devotion without agenda Love and devotion aimed at me Which was surprisin...

Over the years, I’ve started several businesses A nonprofit to teach kids geography & culture A children’s book publishing company And a toy company to produce action figures Of traditional heroes from around the world The idea was to make high quality representations With the same appeal markers as pop culture toys To popularize some of the wisdom and wonder Of earth’s historic and pervasive stor...

I love the wholeness of recognizing the divine being in both friction and flow That ease is rarely full-time And that the ‘not ease’ parts are holy too It’s all divine favor, not just the happy bits The whole of the yin and the yang rests in the tao I remember the moment In my Calypso blue laundry room in Rhode Island I realized I had been spending my life Trying to erase the yin side of my inner...

The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda contains 8 volumes Which I didn’t know when I picked up the one marked 9 Instead of his teachings, I received his letters Which were often mundane, but became a delight Because he, Swami Vivekananda, a true beacon of God Consciousness Was worried about money and health and schedule conflicts Experiencing plenty of uncertainty and frustration Navigating it in...