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Kate Spring

~ growing a deep-rooted life

Kate Spring

Tag Archives: yoga

No Mud, No Lotus

03 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by Kate Spring in Morning Inspiration, Seasons

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

change, inspiration, life, nature, spirituality, Thich Nhat Hanh, yoga

No Mud,No Lotus

Years ago, sitting cross-legged in a yoga class, my teacher spoke about the muck on the bottom of the pond.  How the muck is home to the roots.  How it gives birth to the lotus.  I sat there, grounding my sacrum to the floor, strengthening my spine, feeling the opening at the crown of my head, and breathed in the lesson.  In that moment, the relationship between the mud and the lotus was so clear.  You’d think as a farmer I’d never forget it.

But I do forget it.  Despite the compost we shovel on our field each year, despite the fact that my livelihood depends on manure, I forget the balance.  I have to re-learn it each spring.

The month of March churned up the internal muck, and I caught myself there, in the opaque sludge of worry, in the heavy suction of resistance.  It took weeks to remember that pushing down to find grounding is futile in the muck.  It took weeks to remember how to trust in letting go.  How to trust in the mud.

Eventually, movement returned.  I don’t know if it was external validation or the wind bringing in warm air and clear skies, or the exhaustion of trying so hard that finally brought me to letting go, but I’m shifting into spring and feel the shoots starting to rise from the murky base.

Somewhere in all of it, I remembered sitting in that yoga class, remembered the space that filled my body as I breathed from the flower down to the roots, remembered that this cycle has spun through me before.  And I’ve woken up into trust, into space, into abundance.

I’ve woken up.

No mud, no lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh said, and I remember that the pond, too, sleeps and must wake each spring.  That the lotus, too, must bloom anew each year.

 

 

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The Space That Returns

19 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by Kate Spring in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

change, life, spirituality, yoga

It was one of those mornings without enough time.  I woke feeling tight inside and looked at the last entry in my journal: 11/12/13.  Eight days ago.  No wonder.  I haven’t taken even a few moments to write in the morning all week, and now that I’m back at my winter job three days a week, the hours before 7:00 am are precious, time to snuggle with Waylon and breastfeed him before my Mom picks him up for the day.  Edge and Waylon hugged me together, and the tears that threatened to come dried up.

The radio turned on with my car, but I didn’t get far before switching it off.  Too much bad news: reviews of books on war zones, updates on tornado damage, and reports of suicide bombings.  I put in a cd and the music of Steven Walters played to me as I drove:

just this moment, always changing always the same
just this moment, so wild and yet so tame
just this moment, I’m dancing in the flames
let them burn, let them burn, let them burn,
I am what remains

As I walked into work I passed an adjoining office and saw two co-workers in mountain pose and hands in prayer.  Just seeing them brought a deep breath back into my body, and I took my coat off and assumed the same pose before joining them in sun salutations, breathing and stretching down to my toes.

Before I left the yurt today I took a moment to write, ending with this prayer: May I find the quiet at the core of my being.

I sit here now feeling calm, still, quiet.  Thankful for impromptu morning yoga and the space that returns with breath.

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What the Heart Knows

23 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by Kate Spring in Wildness, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

earth, happiness, nature, place, Thoreau, wildness, winter, yoga

“Always trust what the heart knows” ~Hafiz

It is the year of the Black Water Dragon in the Chinese Zodiac.  Yesterday in yoga class, my teacher Margaret Pitkin talked about the power of the Dragon and invoking our hearts to dream and to fulfill those dreams.  She shared a story of going into Staples and seeing everyone walking around looking half dead, as if their energy was being sucked from them.  When she walked out of the store, she imagined a world where everyone you meet is inspired and energized.  She said to us, “imagine a world where you wake up every morning, jump out of bed, and shout YES!”  To this, the class laughed and smiled, and I breathed into the joy of the moment.  We spent the rest of the class opening our hearts through shoulder stretches and back bends, making our chests broader and energizing each part of our bodies, from toes to fingertips.

Since winter began, I have been quieting my mind and meeting a kind of happiness that I cannot express in words.  The best I can do is to say it emanates, and I feel it around me and in me equally.  At the same time, I have been exploring the winter woods, and my search for wildness has brought the question of what it means to live wildly myself—what does it mean to have a wild heart?  When Thoreau spoke of wildness, he spoke of the Greek word for beauty or order, which was their name for the world.  In our language, that word is cosmos, and we have come to define it as harmonious order.  The author Jack Turner writes, “in the broadest sense we can say that Thoreau’s ‘In Wildness is the Preservation of the World’ is about the relation of free, self-willed, and self-determinate ‘things’ with the harmonious order of the cosmos.”  The important thing then, is the relationship.  To live wildly, to have a wild heart, one must first wake up to the heart, and then live as part of the earth, recognizing the relationship: we depend on the world for our sustenance and our lives, and the world depends on us to keep a balance and contribute to the harmony.

The heart, the forest, yoga, dreams, wildness, winter, happiness: these are all connected.  To dream is important.  To open the heart is important.  Dreams are realized with an open heart.  An open heart is a wild heart.  A wild heart honors the cosmic connections that keep us alive with energy.

Now I know I am wild, and what is the next step?  I cannot say, but I will trust what the heart knows.

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Welcome!

Kate Spring

Kate Spring

Welcome to The Good Heart Life: an organic gardening and lifestyle blog where we grow beauty, joy, and nourishment for the body, soul, and earth. I'm Kate Spring: organic farmer, mother, and chief inspiration officer at Good Heart Farmstead and The Good Heart Life. Grow along with us, and together we'll cultivate a more lively, joyful world one {organic} seed at a time.

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