healing

Stop. Breathe. Breathe again.

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Stop. Breathe. Breathe again. In that time, did you miss anything? A multimillion-dollar deal? A major life event? So what is the rush? What is the constant need to be doing something? It is going to be ok, even if you stop to breathe for a few minutes.

Of course, if you want to take that to a really healing level, you should take a few days off for a silence retreat, a technology detox, a news cleanse, a silent retreat, call it what you will. For the last five or so years, I have had the privilege of taking a few days off and heading North, over the Guadarrama mountains to the Monasterio de El Paular.

Although the Benedictine monks ask you to pray with them at least three of their five prayers, I always enjoy going to all five, including the 6:30am Maitines. There is a great beauty in reciting the Psalms and praying together in a slow, contemplative rhythm.

When you are not praying you are free to go hiking in the mountains. This year I went up to the Reventón for the first time to check out El carro del diablo, a huge rock with a legend about the cathedral of Segovia and, you guessed it, the devil. I also went up to the Puente de la Angostura bridge which I had not visited in years.

A particularly healing aspect is when the monks ask you to work with them. This time we had to sweep the farmhouse porch for the upcoming fiesta of St. John’s dinner. Brother Enrique and I spent the morning cleaning and fixing up area for the party.

The rest of the time you are meditating, reading, writing, enjoying the Vicente Carducho paintings in the cloister, praying. It is an amazing experience. You should try it. Here is the link for the monastery or find one near you!

https://www.monasteriodeelpaular.com/

You are welcome.

Saying farewell is hard. Fr. George and emotional healing.

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“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”

Rumi

Life is a story, a narrative, with a beginning and an end, and in between (hopefully) many chapters, some longer and some shorter. When a chapter finishes, or is left unfinished, it is emotional. It is emotional because you are back to a blank page, you can start a new chapter -you should start a new chapter.

Saying goodbye is a process shared by all humanity, the emotions that we share when we say farewell. Books, films, plays, operas, ballets, songs, poems (especially poems), you name it, have been devoted to saying goodbye, how we deal with it, how we process, the whole messy procedure. And here is the space for magic to happen in the space left by the person who has left. As you let go of the person leaving, you are on the threshold, you are now open to growth, to seeing what you can take from the friendship, or whatever it was, and make yourself a better person, a more understanding person. Or you can become bitter and insecure.

It is in these transitional moments of our lives that authentic transformation can happen. Otherwise, it is just business as usual and an eternally boring, status quo existence. 

Richard Rohr

From family members, to loved ones, friends that sometimes you love as much as family, or even someone you have recently met but with whom you connected with, and everybody in between. Saying goodbye is hard.

The key word there is connection; the moment you share, you laugh, you cry, everything forms a connection with the other person.

Fr. George generously invited me to go paddle boarding with him last Fall, it became a bit of a tradition, going out early in the morning for an hour or so, and then getting a coffee at Willy Cafe before heading to work. We connected. Now he is leaving our school and going back to Orlando. As a proper surfer, Fr. George is known to wear Hawaiian shirts when not in his clerics; The other day, to celebrate him, we all agreed to wear Hawaiian shirts in his honor, it was fun and moving at the same time!

Words are so clumsy at explaining the feelings, the void left in your heart when someone leaves, dies, ghosts you, whatever.

Of the many, many words to express goodbyes, I like Rumi’s quote at the top and this poem a lot. What are your favorite farewell songs, poems, books? Let me know in the comments.

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

E. E. Cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Mind, body and soul, exercise, yoga and meditation

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Baking brownies for the Ronald McDonald Family Room
Accept yourself
Giving your time is awesome therapy
The French way has a strong spiritual charge
Conversing with brother Eulogio, a Benedictine monk
A quiet garden to meditate in near my house
Richard Rohr’s wonderful lessons
Practicing Yoga on the Camino, wonderful session!

For a few years, since 2010 to be precise, I have been actively seeking inner peace, not just talking about it with a drink in one hand and a cigar in the other staring at a sunset. It is only with breakage that one slowly lets go of the ego and matures through Kierkegaard’s three stages that we have seen before (the aesthetic, the ethic and the spiritual). With my divorce and the life changes brought about by that trauma, I started seeking solace and understanding. My first, basically subconscious moves were to exercise, to work with a therapist (the amazing Dr. Nemser), I went to church on Sunday – and have not missed a Sunday since (maybe a couple but only for reasons of force majeure), and volunteering. I started reading Scripture every night, then I got hooked on Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations, I tried to find inspiring readings, revisiting Tolstoy’s The death of Ivan Illich, Milton, Jalics, etc. With time I started meditating, then I started yoga, then came walking the pilgrimage to Santiago…

Little by little I started realizing in my body, mind and spirit that all these things were connected, that working with one affected the other two. Yoga, even weightlifting quieted my mind, meditating relaxed my body and spirit. Breathing helped me stretch during yoga. I realized that while we are made up of many different things, we are in fact one totality of being with a single energy.

I started yoga lessons in North Carolina about six years ago. It was the perfect thing for saturdays after friday night soccer games. And just like that I was hooked. I normally find a gym or a studio that has lessons, but in a pinch I use an app called Down Dog which is very scalable!

For meditation, I usually wait until the end of the day so I have nothing left to do that day. Or I parcel out a time to mediate. I sit and breathe, focussing on my breathing for twenty minutes. I use a great app called Insight timer where I can time myself, take courses, dial into guided meditations – and it keeps track of your progress!

Then I started using these techniques with my athletes when I coached, most recently and successfully the tennis players at the Hun School. Yoga on days in between games, a bit of meditation before games, it all translated to happier, less injured, more understanding players.

Volunteering has been a key factor in my recent growth and maturity. First at Community Servings in Boston cooking for sick, homebound families. In Chapel Hill I volunteered every monday night for four years at the Ronald McDonald House. In Naples I helped out the St. Vincent de Paul charities. Now in Madrid I’m helping at the Ronald McDonald Family Room at the La Paz Hospital in Madrid, for families with premature babies.

My second pilgrimage to Santiago I really focused on walking, meditating, stopping at churches for contemplation, doing yoga after the day’s walk. It really was magical, and I noticed a holistic improvement!

Healing is a long process that there is no way to rush. Acceptance, gratitude, patience, forgiveness, compassion, perspective, humility, understanding, generosity, none of these knock on your door overnight. One must consciously work at healing, it is slowly working for me, give it a try!

 

Van “the man” Morrison

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Fjv7YZ83M

Even if you do not realize it, if you have ever listened to the radio, you have heard Van Morrison. This was my case until one winter afternoon in the early nineties, relaxing on the patio of a slope-side coffee shop in Sugarloaf Maine, where the Boston Gourmet Society had a ski chalet, that I paid attention and realized I was listening to Van Morrison, Moondance, of course. I bought that CD and listened to it endlessly. One summer I was alone in the country house at La Navata (see previous posts) it was all I listened to.

Fast forward to the mid-nineties. Right after breaking up with my first wife, I was on a business trip to a convention in Las Vegas. Bored at the thought of spending a whole weekend alone in the city of sin, I called a friend in San Francisco and I was on a plane. The weekend was fantastic as I had not seen my friend in years and had not been to San Francisco in even more years. She had Van’s Wavelength CD in her little BMW, and that was all we listened to all week-end long as we tooled around the city.

As soon as I got back to Madrid I bought that CD and listened to it over and over again. Then I bought another and another until I had the whole Van Morrison discography – over 40 CDs. In fact I listened exclusively to Van Morrison for eight full months straight. I did not realize it at the time, but it was therapeutic for me. One summer morning when I woke up and played a Rolling Stones CD, I knew I was on the mend!

Van Morrison, The lion of Belfast, has been in the business since he was 17. He plays a bunch of instruments, and more importantly he is credited with being the first to bring jazz influences like the double bass, brass sections, etc. to pop. His Astral Weeks is considered one of most influential records in contemporary music. He plays and tours around the world constantly and is not  afraid to work with top, top talent like Brian Kennedy, Georgie Fame or Saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis.

Personally I love Van’s intimate personal meaning, on some songs deep spirituality that connects with my soul in a way no other music does. Four of the six CDs in my car are Van (the other two are baroque and opera if you must know). I have had the privilege of seeing Van play a few times and they were very moving experiences.

It would be silly to try to say what songs are my favorites as they change with my moods and where I am in my life. A song I might have listened to hundreds of times without paying much attention might all of a sudden catch me. Songs that I had obsessed about in the past might come back to me. I might re-visit certain songs, or even certain parts of certain songs.

This clip is a song I have been listening to over and over recently. One of Van’s recurring themes is that of healing and this song pretty much sums it all up. I hope you like it.