vision boards

During yesterday's coaching session, Cezarina taught me about vision boards as a tool of intentionality. I already know how powerful intentionality is, plus my creative self has been under-expressed lately, so I was enthusiastic.

A vision board is a piece of paper or cardboard that you collage with images which represent your vision for yourself. These are images of things yet to be, and the creation of the vision board is a statement of intentionality. Afterward, the vision board becomes a powerful reminder, and a visual affirmation. The board can be carried with you (if it is small or fold-able), or placed in an area of your home or office that you will encounter often.

I created my first vision board on the theme of eating and food. A few weeks ago I bought a large amount of fruit and ate several servings every day. I felt great! I now want to convert my diet to a mostly whole / raw food diet. The vision board is now posted on my refrigerator, where I can see it as I make my food selections.

The figure at the top represents physical health, mobility and flexibility, traits that I desire to deepen. The text in the center is Khalil Gibran's chapter On Eating and Drinking from The Prophet. Throughout the midsection of the board are images of the lovely, healthy, mouth-watering foods I want to incorporate into my diet.

At the bottom of the page, something beautiful and profound eveolved without me planning it. Among the magazines I was searching for images, I found a picture of an elderly, wrinkled woman whose keen eyes reveal cleverness and astute awareness. I began looking for more pictures of older women. My sister talked to me last weekend about life as "elder training", with achieving elderhood as the pinnacle of one's life. I want to live to be old enough to be an elder. I want to make healthy choices today both for the present and the future. I wrote these lines toward the bottom of the page (the first appropriated from an awesome Kaiser commercial):

"When I grow up, I want to be an old woman.
When I grow up, I want to be an ELDER.

MOMENT BY MOMENT BY MOMENT BY MOMENT...

ELDER."

on eating and drinking

-From The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran

Then an old man, a keeper of an inn, said, "Speak to us of Eating and Drinking."
And he said:
Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth, and like an air plant be sustained by the light.
But since you must kill to eat, and rob the newly born of its mother's milk to quench your thirst, let it then be an act of worship,
And let your board stand an altar on which the pure and the innocent of forest and plain are sacrificed for that which is purer and still more innocent in man.

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,
"By the same power that slays you, I too am slain; and I too shall be consumed.
For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.
Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart,
"Your seeds shall live in my body,
And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart,
And your fragrance shall be my breath,
And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons."

And in the autumn, when you gather the grapes of your vineyards for the winepress, say in you heart,
"I to am a vineyard, and my fruit shall be gathered for the winepress,
And like new wine I shall be kept in eternal vessels."
And in winter, when you draw the wine, let there be in your heart a song for each cup;
And let there be in the song a remembrance for the autumn days, and for the vineyard, and for the winepress.

waiting for instinct

“Do you have patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”
- Lao Tzu

should [not]

I am finding that "should" is the greatest enemy to my own personal mindfulness. I am learning to observe and respond to my body, mind, and spirit based on my own needs and cues. "Should" removes me from the realm of attunement to self, and has me behave according to some external, fixed principle. When I act on "shoulds", I am ceasing to be responsive to my own intuition and instinct.