It Only Takes A Minute
“Someone asked me recently: What is it that haunts you? I said, ‘I can tell you exactly; it is the sense of time slipping through my fingers like fine sand. And there is nothing I can do to slow it.’ …From time immemorial it has been one of the deepest longings of the human heart to strain against the erosion of one’s life, to find a way of living and being that manages to find some stable ground within time, a place from where something eternal can be harvested from our disappearance.”
John O’Donohue in To Bless the Space Between Us (Doubleday, 2008)
(Adapted from Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power, New Harbinger Publications, 2009)
As August draws to a close, school terms resume and Labor Day draws near. The memories of the lazy days of summer will fade as we return from summer holidays and resume our daily work. With that transition, time will take on a different quality. John O’Donohue is one of the most articulate voices at the interface of the seen and unseen, of the inner and outer human landscapes, and of the understood and mysterious in our lives. The transience of our lives and our relationship to time are compelling challenges in finding our way and deciding what to do and what really matters to us.
Contemporary life these days is confronting a new challenge, actually what has been called a “new poverty”. It is the poverty of time, i.e. too much to do and not enough time to do it. How can we replenish ourselves as the time keeps ticking away? Are there ways to slow the passage of time? One thing that is possible is to bring conscious awareness to our selves in the course of our busy daily lives.
Destiny or Fate?
“Man can touch more than he can grasp.” Gabriel Marcel
Summer is a time for day dreaming. Our dreams guide us as we chart our path.
The following blog post comes from Patrick O’Neill (www.patrickoneill.ca) whose organizational development, communications skill-building, and change management work are based at Extraordinary Conversations, Inc. in Toronto, Canada (see Deep Medicine blogroll).
According to Patrick, one of our most important responsibilities is to envision the future. An action he calls “visionmaking”. Visionmaking requires the practice of reflection, which he describes as “…the act of turning the eyes from the outer world to the inner landscape of our aspirations, dreams, possibilities and opportunities.”
Do our dreams and aspirations serve to co-create the future or are our fate and destiny predetermined? His response to that question follows in an entry to his blog from earlier this year….
Never Tire of New Sources of Wisdom
Excerpted from: Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power
“The teacher can open the door, but the student must enter himself.” - Chinese proverb
Not long ago I had the opportunity of attending a retreat as part of the transformative work done by the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, California ( www.noetic.org ). One of the exercises involved taking time in silence on the beautiful rolling hills that are part of the Institute’s campus. We were sent out onto the land with a ceremony led by Michael Harner of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies ( www.shamanism.org ) using some of the oldest tools of indigenous cultures, the drum and the rattle.
We were given several questions to consider and advised to be alert and attentive to the signs that the land might present to us to help us with the questions we were contemplating.
I set off with lofty expectations. What powerful allies might make themselves visible to me? What wisdom would be revealed by the call of raven or the spirits of native peoples who previously had walked this land?
The Medicine of Play
“Play is the exultation of the possible” – Martin Buber
Play is almost anything that brings joy and stimulates the imagination. Play is a necessary ingredient in fostering well-being and a fulfilling life. It is not just something we do. It is not a waste of time, nor are we doing nothing when we play. Play (and playfulness) is also an attitude and gives us the opportunity to be child-like without necessarily being childish. Although we often think of play as the opposite of work, there are great commonalities between work and play. Like work, play fosters creativity, learning, and teamwork. A word often used in referring to play, “recreation”, can be seen as “re-creation” and emphasizes the interaction between play and creativity. Both work and play are strong determinants of health.
Play, games, and sport energize and enliven us. Read more…
Summer Medicine
Since my days as a school boy in Minnesota, I have looked forward to the end of the school year and the beginning of summer. While sunshine and the heat share the stage with the fog of San Francisco Bay during my summers now, I still yearn for the annual “summer vacation”. It may be that the original reason for a break from school during the summer was meant to free up the children to help with work on the farm during the summer growing season. However, for me it has always been a time of warm long days and evocative nights. A time to sleep late, not wear socks, hang out with friends, visit family, go to the beach, swing in the hammock, introspect, ponder, integrate what had been and look toward what is yet to come.
A Call to Action
There is no happiness that is not somehow rooted in the task of systematic self-examination.
–Plato
This is a remarkable 10-minute animated video about Daniel Pink’s newest book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. He is also the author of A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. What motivates us is a crucial question when dealing with the need to make health-creating change. What moves us to do what we do – or not? How can we initiate and sustain meaningful constructive change? Daniel Pink’s work explores these questions. Likewise, one can take similar action towards their health with a Deep Medicine A.C.T.I.O.N. plan. Read more…
Yoga is Deep Medicine
“The miracle is not to fly in the air, or walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.”
- Chinese proverb
On June 19, 2010, my wife Susy, a skilled and experienced yoga teacher in the tradition of B.K.S. Iyengar, and I facilitated a workshop at the Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, California called “Yoga is Deep Medicine.” This curriculum was first presented at the Turtle Island Yoga Studio in San Anselmo (Marin County), California, earlier this year.
Our bridging of yoga and medicine has come about after many years living and learning together. Both yoga and medicine are ancient wisdom practices and both require self-study, as well as expert guidance. What we have done is integrate the scientific, the yogic, and the metaphoric in a holistic experience supportive of one’s well-being and healing. Read more…
Angeles Arrien is Deep Medicine
“The human spirit is always reaching for the reclamation of its own well-being.”
Angeles Arrien, Ph.D.
from her foreword to Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power (New Harbinger Publications, 2009).
This past weekend I had the privilege of participating in the celebration honoring Angeles Arrien’s 40 years of teaching and the 15th Anniversary of the Angeles Arrien Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research. Angeles is a cultural anthropologist, author, educator, corporate consultant and international wisdom-keeper and treasure. Read more…
What is Deep Medicine?
I invite you to explore the topic of my recent book Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power. Deep medicine connects your personal health with everything that surrounds and inhabits you. It integrates simple techniques with recognition of the need for lifelong learning and practice. This integration provides the greatest potential for healthy, meaningful, thoughtful, compassionate, service-oriented living. Read more…
Tip of the Iceberg
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
As you consider the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, visualize an iceberg, and appreciate that only about one tenth of an iceberg is visible above the surface of the water.
Welcome to DeepMedicine.net
Deep Medicine is about the healing power of going deeper. Practicing deep medicine, we will go within, beneath, to the root, beyond the readily apparent to the hidden riches from which we are nourished and guided and healed.
Health is balance and healing is change to restore balance. There is no issue that is not a health issue. Everything is either health creating or health negating. Everything you think, feel, believe, say and do contributes to your well-being. Whether you are talking about the symptoms of an illness, lifestyle choices, environmental degradation, social injustice, economic disparity, poverty, violence, or spiritual crisis – you are talking about health issues in some way. There is nothing that isn’t related to the state of your personal and collective well-being.
At this site, we will pursue a wide range of topics which will foster our well-being. We will engage the challenge of changing, the pillars and practices of self-care, the power of our individual stories, and the path to wholeness and health that involves bridging our inner and outer worlds. The allure of summer, the power of relationship and community, the healing potential of gratitude, the potential of play, the lessons of uncertainty and impermanence, the impact of service, and the difference between knowledge and wisdom are but a few of the topics we will touch upon.
The heart of this material is contained in my book, Deep Medicine: Harnessing the Source of Your Healing Power (Order online). At DeepMedicine.net we will expand and apply the principles and practices of deep medicine. This is an ambitious task, since it is my first entry to the realm of “social media”. It will be a “work in progress” – like the roads in India which are constantly being worked on but never finished. Nonetheless, I promise that it will be an opportunity for creativity, curiosity, learning and growth.
