Sophia Bonnie Wodin

A dear friend and current student asked the question, "How can I remember who I am?".  The quest ion really hit home because  i t’ s a question I have  asked  myself for  years beyond counting . In fact, much  of my personal work, both spiritually and psychologically, is focused on being able to remember who I am -- Most especially when I have strayed in to  old habits of  heart and mind .  T hat’s when  our personal practices  step in . F or me , noticing that I am living an old script is   a call to  pause,  pay attention  and invoke the witness-self that mindfulness helps us develop .  Any number of meditation teachers will offer the instruction, “when you notice that your mind has strayed very gently, bri ng yourself back [to the breath ] . ”  This instruction is deceptively simple because it is so hard to do. My mind screams out,  “I f I can’t remember who I am, how the * explicative, explicat...

I have found myself saying to a number of people lately,  “ Life brings us to our work…”  This is most certainly true of me, and perhaps for it you as well.   As I walk the path that lies before me I am supported by the skills and tools I have learned along the way. I think of these things as my *practices* and quite frankly, I would be lost without them.   Aside from the skills of Grounding (connecting myself with Earth and Sky) and Centering (staying in touch with the Core of my being, my most essential Self), I call upon the qualities of Courage and Compassion. I access them through the breath, a practice that I first learned from my teacher, T. Thorn Coyle.   The practice itself is simple: breathe in Courage, breathe out Compassion. Or sometimes I reverse them, breathing in Compassion and breathing out Courage. It works either way for me, depending on the circumstance.   But it is the definitions of Courage and Compassion that really matter here. Rather...