Puja Cards
How are you going to engage?

How are you going to engage?

Green America has prepared a helpful list of ingredients to avoid in personal care products, which I offer to you if you are not already familiar with these ingredients and where they are likely to be found. Which of these can you easily avoid, which will take some doing to avoid, but living mindfully with care for yourself and the planet leads you to the doing, and which do you want the product and what it does sufficiently that you do not care about the toxic risk? These questions apply for all sorts of things and not just personal care products.
I spent both Saturday and Sunday morning in a meditation training with Cyndi Lee. I also attended Reggie Hubbard’s afternoon yoga practice today (celebrating Prince’s birthday).
Now, more than ever, is the time to engage and to perform the focused and consistent self-inquiry and self-nurture to support lifelong action.

It is my understanding that unless I wear a sari, I will not be able to go into some of the places that are on the itinerary for the trip to India I will be joining. “Just think of it as playing dress-up,” suggested my sister when I told her the idea of wearing a sari perturbs me. It is not just feeling strange in foreign dress and having to expose that vulnerable fold of flesh at the waist (I have never even owned a bikini because of my discomfort in exposing my waist). What is unsettling me is that to witness what the men can witness while wearing comfortable clothing, the women must agree to wear confining, complicated, and cumbersome clothes. And the sari has come for centuries with the expectation that the woman demurely follows behind doing what she is told by the designated man.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
It’s almost time for Wednesday evening house yoga practice, and I still have my work computer on and open to a couple of documents that I need to review by Monday morning.
I try a practice from the non-violent communication course I have been taking: Since I cannot change the work situation in the short term, I am choosing to think about what needs are being met by my feeling compelled to work by the enormity of upcoming deadlines instead of getting to enjoy the two hours of administrative leave granted in honor of Thanksgiving.
I come up with this tentative list: it is good to feel needed, to be engaged, to experience a sense of competence and responsibility. As I am working from home, I get peaceful quiet and solitude while still feeling connected through the work. This does not mean that I don’t want or shouldn’t take action to change my work situation to better meet other needs, or even these needs better.
I am truly grateful that I am being brought to my yoga mat for an hour and a half tonight and that I’m looking forward to a weekend of friends and food and walks (and more work).
I wish you all the best holiday possible. May you experience gratitude.
Look forward to a longer newsletter and a new look to the website in coming weeks.
Self-care is part of collective care, but only if it is in balance with active care of the collective.
This morning, before reading the news and working hard, I sat for meditation and put up lentil soup in the slow cooker.
