resilience

connection

Category:

resilience

March 24, 2022 in Blog

Grief and resilience live together. -Michelle Obama

Our theme for April is resilience. It’s the central topic in our Immersion program, the subject for April’s Best of Blue video collection and the theme for my Thursday Movement + Rest series. It feels appropriate to talk about, cultivate and practice resilience after a time of so much grief— as they do, indeed, live together. Sometimes when we are faced with grief, we find we are more resilient than we could have imagined. Other times, we recognize our resilience has waned and we are without the resources to cope. 

So, what is resilience?… Read the rest

Kindness and Truth

October 31, 2020 in Blog

As I sit down to write this month, I’m counting. We are 48 hours from Election Day. These few days hold the blue moon on All Hallows’ Eve, Samhain, All Saints Day, All Souls Day. It’s been 230 days since we closed the door after our last class at 401 N. West Street. It’s 25 days until Thanksgiving. It’s 61 days until we turn over the calendar to 2021— blessed be. It’s a time of remembrance, and hopefully a time for change. A movement toward kindness and truth.

Day to day reality has, for most of us, changed radically since last year at this time.… Read the rest

This is who we are.

August 1, 2020 in Blog

It was the longest, strangest and most drawn-out goodbye I’ve ever had. It was also the most beautiful. If you missed it, picture this: beloved friends with masked faces- some community members we’d not seen in years- standing in line along the sidewalk at blue to go in one last time and light a candle, pause in the space, touch bare feet to her floor, send a prayer to the heavens and drop a message into the fire. The hawk, the wild wind, the sudden storm. Beautiful souls, getting soaked in the pouring rain, singing. Where does this happen? Who does this?… Read the rest

This is Dharma

April 12, 2020 in Blog

I was in a group conversation recently when someone piped in “I didn’t sign up for this!” While I know it was partly said with tongue in cheek, there was also a grain of truth in the statement, as the suppressed grief, fear and disappointment of a life upended welled up and spilled out. We didn’t, any of us, sign up for this. Or did we? Makes me think of dharma.

Dharma means “to support” or “right path of life” and at its essence speaks to the unity and interconnectedness of all things. It refers to that which is consistently in alignment with our highest and best, both collectively and personally and points to a way of being that honors that connectivity.… Read the rest

celebrating the love that grows at the blue

February 1, 2016 in Blog

Celebrating the love that grows at the blue

by Jill Sockman

In the same way it’s hard not to write about gratitude in November, it’s nearly impossible for me not to wax nostalgic at this time of year. And somehow this February feels bigger than most. Celebrating our 9th birthday means we are headed into our 10th year of community at blue lotus. And when I look back to where I was 10 years ago, with the exception of a very few most precious near and dear (you know who you are) nothing about my life looks the same now as it did then.… Read the rest

Unplug to Connect

October 31, 2014 in Blog

Unplug to Connect

by Jill Sockman

As I’m writing this, I’m in the process of getting ready to leave for Pinehurst for a weekend of teaching some of my favorite material. I love Pinehurst, our host, the deep-diving nature of the work I’ll share there, getting away, great food, intimate community… But one of the things I am looking forward to the most is getting unplugged.

We live in a world where we can “stay connected” not only in bustling urban centers, but in tiny villages, beaches and jungles in most distant places. Our “staying connected” to news, to home, to work and to all the many distractions of a smartphone or computer often gets very much in the way of being connected to what is in the here and now, of every moment, wherever we are.… Read the rest