I let out a sigh yesterday at the Midwest Yoga Conference. Yes, there’s clothes and mats and other products. There’s superstar yogis (Seane Corne, David Saul Rae, Jonny Kest). There’s amazing spa and pool facilities posh abundance or extravagance.
It was for the simplest of things:
Reconnecting with good friends;
Meeting new kindred people;
Messages that reaffirm my spirit;
Mantras for new motivation and action.
You see I met and heard Julia Butterfly Hill.
Here are some key things she said that I wanted to share right away. I’ll do more later, after I’m done sopping all this up with my biscuits this weekend.
“Extraordinary acts are meant for us to embrace the extra and the ordinary in each of us.”
See, Julia spent two years doing something she didn’t think would happen to her. It started as an ordinary thought and then the extra followed.
“You can’t hear in someone else anything that doesn’t already exist in yourself.”
“Everything we need to know is already within us…. We’re just here to remember.”
All the seeds of time are inside of us and we send them forward. Julia connected with the deep roots and ancient spirit of the Redwood forests in the Pacific Northwest. She didn’t know ahead of time what her calling was but it was there all the time.
“Every time we take a breath a miracle happens.”
We cannot take for granted even something so automatic as the normal cycle of our breathing. Julia spent two years in a tree making a statement of validation of life for the forest – not a protest. Making a statement of the mission of man a steward. Making a statement about this miracle that exists on this planet in so many forms every day.
“It is impossible not to make a difference.”
Everything we do has an impact and influence. We get to choose how and what that influence or impact is. But it is naïve to think…I or it won’t make a difference.
We have been numbed and hypnotized as a society with this statement:
“Throw it away.” “We’ve been conditioned to actually believe there’s such a place as AWAY.”
These are just snippets of last night’s keynote speaker. I have some video and audio. I’ll check the quality when I get home. I’m disconnecting now and hitting my mat for the next two days. Yoga. Aaaah.
Be well. Do good deeds.
Namaste.