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Sunday 28 Feb 2010
SPRING 2010
GREETINGS! Spring is such an especially beautiful time in our city – the colourful bulbs are peeking out from their winter habituation & the trees are dawning their fresh coats to salute the warmth & light emerging from the dark times. We are also celebrating the 14 bright gold medals won by our Olympic athletes! The streets are abounding in good cheer, pride & happiness. So we join with Mary Oliver:
Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come
up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their
curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come
home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,
happiness, music, ambition.
And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to
go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of
this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.
from – “A Settlement”
I will be away at the Continuum Teachers’ retreat next week, returning to welcome you to the resuming of our “Winter into Spring” class series, and bringing with me new ideas for us to explore.
Classes: Fridays, March 12, 19 & 26 @Yoga on 7th from 9:30-11:45am. If you are just joining the classes, & wish to taste the Continuum experience, you may drop-in to the first class on March 12. Fee for the three classes is $84. (20% off for underemployed).
Mini-Workshop on March 27 from 2-5pm, “Tapping into Your Visionary Self.” (See www.dorismaranda.com for details)
PREVIEW FOR SPRING SCHEDULE:
INTRODUCTION TO CONTINUUM @ BANYEN BOOKS ON SUNDAY, APRIL 11TH – www.banyen.com
Classes @ Yoga on 7th: Friday mornings: April 16, 23, May 7, 14, 28 & June 4 with Mini – workshop on Saturday, May 8th, “Weaving the Extraordinary into the Ordinary.” Details to follow later.
Blessings, Doris
Sunday 27 Dec 2009
WINTER 2010
CONTINUUM VANCOUVER
NEWSLETTER – WINTER 2010
It is Christmas Day. I am sitting in my home basking in a shaft of sunlight coming through the window, reflecting on the passing of the darkness and the turning to the light, along with the soon to be passing of another year. What may be in store for my future and the future of our world? It is a time of gratitude for the blessings of my family and community and the abundance that we share, knowing that there are many of our brothers and sisters in the world who are suffering from the effects of war, violence, poverty and even starvation. One of the things we initiated in my women’s group last year, instead of giving material gifts, was to give each other a donation to an organization or charity of our choice which benefited some humans in greater need than ourselves. The giving of gifts is also a remembrance of the gift of life, that light burning within each soul and encourages the evolving of the inner gifts that each soul brings to the world no matter what the manifestation of their outer life.
Recently, I listened to a CD from a talk given by David Whyte, entitled “A Change for the Better, Poetry & the Reimagination of Midlife.” As usual, I am inspired by David Whyte’s insights into the human condition, in particular in this talk about the changes forced upon us by the limitations occurring in midlife. This evokes my experiences over the last two decades with the physical losses I have had to deal with and the truth of what David Whyte says in this talk, “To become a full human being, we need to confront and take it all in.” My teacher, Emilie Conrad, has said that when something passes, something else will come in to take its place. From David Whyte’s poem, “Millennium,”
The place you have fallen
refusing to rise again
becomes the spiral line of flame
where we turn
into the one desire
we have not lived.
While it is necessary to mourn our losses as something that is passing and the limitations that may follow, it is also important to keep opening up to “what else,” to other possibilities. One can see these situations as limitations and cling to what was or to see them as opportunities and challenges and began to look forward to new ways of being and perceiving. This has certainly been my learning, to be with what is, to learn from it fully and to move on with curiosity, compassion for oneself and with patience.
David Whyte quotes from “Weathering”, by a New Zealand poet, speaking to her experience of the aging process: “Now I’m in love with a place that doesn’t care how I look or if I’m happy, then happy is how I look.” “Whatever context you’ve arranged for your existence, there’s another that makes it absurd.”
With love and blessings for the new year,
Doris
December 25, 2009
Thursday 27 Aug 2009
NEWSLETTER FALL 2009
CONTINUUM VANCOUVER – NEWSLETTER FALL 2009
With our beautiful and leisurely summer time coming to an end for this year, we turn towards the lessening of the light and the approaching dark time of the year, the entry into autumn and retreating within.
Michael Meade’s latest CD, “The Light Within the Dark Times” has inspired me, as Michael often does. He speaks of two movements, ascending into light/spirit and then descending into dark/soul and the need for both. In these difficult, dark times of our world (which is being reflected in many personal lives), our souls are calling us to gather and to deepen into ourselves. “If you’re falling fast, the only way to react is to dive down deeper.” Spirit is connected to faith and we are seeing a loss of faith in the systems, in our culture’s ways of interacting with our world. The soul brings the healing, the reconnecting to the eternal world, the world behind the world, touching once again into the mysteries.
This will be the theme of my second Mini-Workshop in November, recreating the path through our somatic realm to the depths of soul and the eternal world. The initial descent is through the body, perceiving through the senses which takes us part of the way, the soul the rest. That is the place of surrender, entering endarkenment, allowing the soul, moving from the inside out, to find the way.
From Rumi, You are uneven in your opening, sometimes closed, sometimes unreachable, sometimes with your torn shirt of longing wrapped around your heart. Your discursive intellect dominates for a time, then the universal, beyond time and intelligence, begins to come again. So sell your questioning talents and buy more bewildering surrender.
Following are my fall offerings for your contemplation. Would love to have you join us – we can perceive and descend together. Wherever people gather, it is a ceremony!
With love & blessings, DORIS
August 27, 2009
Tuesday 09 Jun 2009
SUMMER 2009
NEWSLETTER – SUMMER 2009
This we know………
The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected, like blood which connects one family.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life—-he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
—-Chief Seattle, l854
These well known words from Chief Seattle speak to what I see as enlightenment – connection to self and other. How could it be otherwise? Yet though we may agree with the importance of this, how do we live that out in our daily lives, in each moment?
Through the processes and tools of Continuum and my experience in the Portals of Perception workshops with Susan Harper & Hubert Goddard, I am becoming clearer about the “how to do this.” It is through awareness, a practice of mindfulness, that anchors me in where and how I am in each moment, whether it be walking, sitting, meditating, dancing or washing the dishes. As I discovered in my month long retreat in January, 2008, this practice is the key to becoming connected to self & other.
Remember yourself – again and again and again——
“To embody the spirit of this world such that others may experience it as well is what the art of blessing is all about.” David Spangler, Blessing
With love & blessings, Doris
June 6, 2009
Saturday 07 Mar 2009
CONTINUUM VANCOUVER SPRING 2009
Spring is in the air which is warming more each day. The light is enhancing the budding on the trees, the shoots of the bulbs emerging with their delicate heads from the earth and the birds are joining in the chorus of sounds drowning out the city noises (at least in my auditory sense). Such a renewal and affirmation of life! Time to tune into the seasonal rhythms & what has been buried & hibernating through the dark times in us is beginning to emerge from the “composting” within – new possibilities building on the “what was,” reseeding and bringing new aliveness to explore and express in various ways in our lives.
With love & Blessings, Doris
Tuesday 11 Nov 2008
UPDATE November 2008
GREETINGS! The dark is settling in along with the rain, the trees are becoming bare with the last glimpses of brilliant colour beginning to fade & yet there are days like yesterday when the sun shines through. All is good! I so appreciate the changability of the outer as well as the inner world and more and more am able to greet each day with whatever it brings.
With love & blessings, Doris
Wednesday 20 Aug 2008
NEWSLETTER FALL 2008
Greetings to All:
As summer is nearing its end, the season turns to the coming of fall, back to school days, the diminishing of the light, the anticipation of the shedding of leaves and the hibernating time of winter in the wings. For yours truly, coming from the leisurely expanse of my sabbatical/retreat time from January to June, I am back into planning, teaching, and counselling.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Retreat Day and classes at Source Point this summer and they provided me with a wonderful sliding into the “back to work” mode. I find the challenge of staying with my practice of “following impulse,” to be more difficult with the scheduling rather than the actual teaching and sitting with my clients which I find enriching and stimulating. So the challenge continues with paying attention to my somatic & feeling response to planning, scheduling and being “on” as teacher, guide and facilitator. The sabbatical also reinforced how absolutely necessary it is to continue to make time for myself, in my own practice, my study and my rest time. When we get busy it is so easy to slide into ways of rewarding oneself that are not particularly nuturing.
From an amazing evening with the incredibly human & knowledgeable Daniel Siegel on June 18, I was struck by how many practices promote mindfulness, which Continuum certainly does. So much of my practice for myself in January was in this vein – following impulse, paying attention to my somatic responses with curiosity, love & compassion & without judgment. As one does this with oneself, it then extends outward to others. Seigel himself came to this awareness through his psychiatric work with families.
Seigel spoke to the importance of relationships in mindfulness – to the interpersonal attuned mind. The social circuit of the brain is the regulatory circuit and social circuits are thicker in mindfulness practitioners. Practice generates a state of mindful attention in the present moment and promotes the integrative, transformative growth of the brain, those functions being primarily in the pre-frontal lobe of the brain. In addition, there is evidence of healing of a variety of clinical conditions with mindfulness practice as well as increasing the immune system and the neuroplasticity of the organism, the ability to shift & respond to changing context.
I leave on Saturday to join the amazing “Miss Em” for her “Moving Medicine” workshop at Hollyhock. I plan on extending my time on Cortes Island for another week of dipping into the retreat & playtime space at our cabin on Gorge Harbour.
With love & blessings, Doris
Saturday 31 May 2008
Summer 2008
Greetings for the summer season, slowly but surely approaching! As the warm breezes become more prevalent, warming us up inside as well as outside, we think of summer plans as well as the lazy, hazy days, non-planning and non-doing that this season generates in us.
Coming out of my 6 months sabbitical, I offer to you the following schedule for the summer. As well, in July I will be resuming my counselling practice and will be making appointments in June.
RETREAT DAY @ SOURCE POINT – SUNDAY JULY 13TH, 12 – 5 PM.
Source Point Studio is located @ 3263 Heather between W 16th & 17th. Investment: Sliding scale: $60-$80.
MOVING FROM DEPRIVATION TO ABUNDANCE – Summer is a time of fullness, an expansion of the composting time of winter which has moved into the seeding, the budding of new visions and beginnings of the spring. In this retreat day we will ask what helps to lead you to a fuller sense of yourself in your life and what stops you from coming to a realization and expression of your true essence.
Through Continuum’s intricate sound sequences accompanied by movement explorations, we connect to our inner, dynamic fluid selves. We inculcate environments designed to elicit new creative responses, like a “movement tour,” expanding our range of interaction and encourage new “plays” within our bodies and with the environment. We will interweave this creative sourcing into the play of our dreams and dreamtime images, ritual and expressive arts.
CONTINUUM MOVEMENT CLASS SERIES – 4 Thursdays 9:30-11:30AM – July 24-August 14
@ Source Point Studio. Investment for series: $110. Drop in $30 (with Continuum experience).
I have never held classes in the summer but am eager to resume my teaching again & pass on some of the latest innovations from Emilie Conrad & Susan Harper, as well as some of the elements I have been exploring in this sabbitical/retreat time. I am hoping you will join me and we shall see what emerges from our individual expressions and the field we create together.
REMINDER – Moving Medicine with Emilie Conrad @ Hollyhock, August 24-29.
Contact: registration@hollyhock.ca or 1-800-933-6339.
With love & blessings, Doris
Monday 12 May 2008
NEWSLETTER SPRING 2008
Today is Mother’s Day – May 11, 2008, an auspicious time to be sending out this newsletter. Since returning from Emilie Conrad’s wonderful 4 day Continuum workshop, “Moving Medicine” in Seattle, I have been immersed in house hunting, a daunting task and quite a challenge to retain some of the incredible dropped down and aware state I reached through the time with Emilie and my two weeks in April at Cortes. So much of what I’m learning is how to modulate and balance the “doings” that a busy active life in Vancouver demands, with the processes that drop me in that rich inner life which we all long for.
Since embarking on my six month sabbatical, I have wanted to write an update and let you all know how my experiment was progressing. However I haven’t felt the impulse. Then towards the end of my two week stay at our cabin on Cortes, it came upon me and I wrote and wrote. Following is what emerged. I will be returning to my counseling practice at the beginning of July and also sending out another message with my Summer Continuum schedule.
Cortes Cabin, Cortes Island —- April 24, 2008 —– LET IT BE
Running through so many of my thoughts and those of the authors I have been reading, comes the theme of being fully in the present moment. Think back to Ram Das’ first book in the “60’s, “Be Here Now” and of course, Eckhardt Tolle’s “The Power of Now” (made famous by the power of Oprah Winfrey). I’m sure each of you could think of many who speak to this. Then why is it so difficult? Deepak Choprah states that 97% of our thoughts are in the past (even thoughts of the future anticipate what will happen based on the past).
When we are fully in the present moment, it’s amazingly rich and peaceful. I have been reading Oriah Mountain Dreamer’s, “The Call” and she points out that the difficulty lies in our resistance to the reality of impermanence. Everything is always moving and changing – the basic tenant of Continuum being “We do not move, we are movement.”
So to be in the fluid, present moment, we look at the nature of water – always moving, shape shifting and changing depending upon the context – from solid, to fluid to vapour. As I watch the view from the windows of our cabin, I note that while everything I see is changing, it is the water in the ocean that changes and moves rapidly from moment to moment, combined with the air and the wind. I look away and back – it’s different. The other elements – the trees, the rocks, the earth are also changing but albeit so slowly, we can’t capture it with the eye. The creatures I see – the birds, the ducks and the squirrels, are also in constant motion. They fly in, swim in, run into my view and then they’re gone. They, like us, are composed mainly of water – dynamic, alive & moving.
In Continuum, we speak of the influence of our breath on the waters inside of us. Why do we resist these organic, biological rhythms and movements of change and cling so tenaciously to what is familiar, even if it is something we hate, are bored with, or cause us incredible pain??
When I first came to our island cabin for two weeks in April, I realized quite soon that my experience this time was quite different from the month I spent here in January. For one obvious reason, I had a whole month compared to two weeks. For another, there were many “to-dos” at the cabin this time – carpenter ants to be dealt with, hydro poles needing replacement, details to be attended to with the subdivision we are planning and so on and so forth it goes.
And Yes, it is spring and January was in winter, in the composting, hibernating time, while spring is beginnings, what was hibernating coming awake, alive and needing to be tended to.
The difference – in January, I became more immersed in and attentive to the spiritual and creative parts of myself, culminating in the deep, dropped down, slowed down and aware state, where, for example, my compulsive eating habits disappeared. I was aware of being hungry, enjoying what I ate and then completely stopping because I was full, no matter what was left on my plate. I even could have a half of a square of chocolate and put the rest back because I didn’t want it. For someone who’s been a compulsive eater since 13 years of age, this was an amazing, freeing and empowering example of how I was in touch with my needs.
During the month of January, I rested a lot, I read a lot, I meditated through Continuum & sitting for 20 minutes a day, I watched my beautiful ocean view with the diving winter ducks on the water, I had periods of days Continuum silence, I exercised every day, went for short walks, I played with painting & collage & photograph and some writing. I attended to the fire (a constant in January) and so on. But mainly, I practiced following impulse and watching my response both physically and emotionally without judgment but with love and compassion and curiosity. I practiced a loving, curious attentiveness towards myself and the situation I was in.
The overall result was totally amazing! I have never felt so peaceful, so rested, so alive, so connected to myself and other. The difference was obvious to myself as well as to others. A side benefit was that I also began to feel stronger physically and more energized.
Returning home in February after a horrendous snow storm where my neighbour had to tow my car out of the driveway, I realized that the intensity of this period would diminish but not disappear as I reentered my life (but not my work) in the city. I needed to put into practice (and still do) all the things I’ve learned over the years of exploration and to trust what I know. I am so grateful for the gifts and the resources that I have accumulated from various teachers and processes and to my community of friends, family and colleagues who support me and I them.
Even though I was alone most of the time in January, I never felt alone. When we drop down and surrender deeply into silent awareness, under the emptiness, we find the fullness of being connected to self (body, soul and spirit), to our community and to our planet and universe. So I feel at all times (well, mostly) that my loved ones are with me, like microtubules supporting the skeleton of my being.
These are the main practices that I carry with me:
(1)the loving & curious attentiveness while following impulse. It is important to learn to be still enough to really feel the impulse and to move & follow it while staying attentive to self and other (context), rather than moving from habit. However, if it is a habitual impulse to move (so much is) it is important to still follow it with loving, curious attention. Soon, you will begin to learn the difference from your response, physically, energetically and emotionally.
(2)to trust myself and practice what I know now, rather than searching the next “goodie” – method, book, workshop, job, relationship, etc.
(3)to never feel alone (I never am anyway – I am intrinsically interconnected and held by my larger “Self”) and to make use of my community of friends and family—to reach out when I’m needy (having the health problems I’ve had in the last few years, especially during my surgeries has helped me to learn the benefits of receiving as well as giving).
So here I am, in a good place at the end of these two weeks of retreat and reflection, and in a different place from the end of my retreat in January. “It’s all good.” And so it is much about knowing when and for how long one needs to withdraw from our busy lives, to tap into those inner resources, to that rich inner life that we have denied ourselves so much of our life. It’s taken me over 70 years to find the place I’m in now and then to keep finding it anew in each moment which involves letting go, making space for another possibility to come in. Combining this with holding myself as part of the greater whole, the community of beings —-
More letting go – I have sold my condo and will be moving at the end of June. I finally made the decision after many back & forths, finding it difficult to let go of my home that I love. However, once I was able to say, if it is meant to be, it will sell, and if I’m not meant to move it won’t, it sold to the first person who came to see it – we didn’t even have an open house!
So too with my beloved companion of seven years, my cat Emily, I went back and forth with finding a loving home for her, and finally again surrendered – if it was meant to be, it will be. Then a wonderful couple answered my ad on Cortes. They have a lovely 5 acre waterfront property, next to a park – sort of cat heaven! She’s most happy and settled in quickly. “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.”
We do what we can to invoke, invite the inner wisdom, then let go of expectations and be open to whatever, give it over to the Greater Being, to the Mystery.
With love and blessings, Doris
Thursday 20 Dec 2007
SPRING 2008
Greetings to All! Wonderful to see the buddings on the trees and plants and the warming temperatures to herald the coming of Spring to our part of the earth/planet: hibernation time opening to new seedings, new visions & dreams!
Wanted to let you know about two opportunities in our area, to work with the amazing “Miss Em” (as she is affectionately known to those of us who love her & revere her visionary teaching) – Emilie Conrad, Continuum’s founder. Please contact Doris Mosler (not me) for further information and registration: dhmosler@aol.com or 206-782-0120.
She will also be at Hollyhock this summer for those of you yearning to attend a residential retreat with Emilie at this very well-run centre on Cortes Island. Dates: August 24-29, 2008, Moving Medicine with Emilie Conrad. For further information & registration: registration@hollyhock.ca or 1-800-933-6339, www.hollyhock.ca.
With love & blessings, Doris
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
NEWSLETTER WINTER/SPRING 2008
Once again, it is the darkest time of the year and we are on the verge of the returning light at Solstice. I sit here with an ever settling feeling in my solar plexus, anticipating and planning for the six months personal retreat I will be beginning on New Year’s Eve as I travel up to our cabin on Cortes Island. I will spend the month of January there hopefully learning to quiet even more the noise in my system and listen to the rhythm and music and dance going on within.
For some time now, especially since my 70th birthday, I have been drawn to making some space for myself with no scheduling – wiping the slate as clear as possible to see what else may emerge. This feels like a hugh experiment, a major letting go of the work that has sustained me. Sharing and collaborating with each soul’s journey with my clients and with the participants in my Continuum classes & workshops has given me much joy and fulfillment over the past years. It is scary to let go of all of that for this period and it is also scary to have no income except for my pension!
What will the outcome be? I have no idea and no expectations. I enter into the mystery of not knowing what will emerge. Maybe nothing, or at least nothing new or earth-shattering. And then again, I may uncover some new piece of how to process my own personal health issues and some shifting in how or what I am focusing on in my work, in what I have to contribute to the world. We shall see.
In this endeavour, I ask for you to keep me in your thoughts & prayers as I will also hold you, the movement community in Vancouver.
When I return to Vancouver, on the second weekend in February, I will be attending, with much appreciation, the workshop of one of my most beloved and revered mentors & colleagues, Susan Harper. I hope to see some of you there.
Some of us in the Continuum community have also talked of perhaps holding a Continuum practice group in Vancouver. Let me know in February if you are interested. I will be out of email contact for the month of January.
Penny Allport, Continuum teacher in Steveston and the Sunshine Coast, will also be teaching during this time. You can check her newsletter @ www.swarainspiritations.ca.
In closing, I want to share with you a poem by Dawna Markova,
“The Gift”
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to be as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
December 17, 2007 With love & blessings,
Doris