on the importance of eating
One of the things we know we all need is to eat.
When Mike Eck decided to leave his tech sales profession, he left with an interest in making sure everyone eats and eats well, especially with food grown locally.
He also had an interest in growing jobs that grew food locally.
Did he have some glimmer that a whole gleaning network could be born in Southwest Ohio?
I guess you'll have to ask him today.
Whatever the case, through Mike's ingenuity and passion, Sue Plummer was hired to organize gleaning. Sue gathers volunteers who harvest food from farms -- food that would ordinarily go to waste. And it's farm-fresh food, beautiful, highly nutritious, and delicious. Those volunteers deliver the food to local soup kitchens and food pantries and La Soupe to be immediately turned into food to feed people for whom farm fresh food would not be possible. And thanks to Mike, the whole thing is now funded by a national organization, the Society of St. Andrew.
If you haven't seen our documentary yet, please do check it out by clicking here.
We're talking thousands upon thousands of pounds a year!
We invite you to a feast today and to hear the inspiring story...
today Sat, May 27...
The Inaugural VITALLY Wild Poetry Party
& Salute to Mike Eck, VITALITY co-founder
special lunch-potluck party
at Gorman Heritage Farm
10052 Reading Rd, Cincinnati, OH 45241
12 – 1:15pm ET -- potluck
1:15 - 2:45pm -- honoring Mike Eck for his many contributions to VITALITY, recognizing the bestsellers of vitalitybuzz.org, and an invitation to read a poem you wrote or you like, all invited to enjoy listening or sharing
What is feeding you that might feed another and another too?
Brian Shircliff
sounds
If you've spent time with infants, we adult-speakers come to know their sounds aimed at communicating, at meaning. A coo this way means they're hungry. A cry this way means they need to be changed.
It's true of any creature really. Our dog makes this sound and we eventually know they want this. Our cat makes this sound and we know they want that. The bird sounds out a song every morning as the light grows and we can guess at its meaning.
If we're attentive observers, we might come to know how the creature's shape changes with each sound...inviting even more layers of meaning.
Sounds. Shapes. Meanings. Possibilities.
As adults, we recognize there is even more meaning than just the agreed upon words/languages we speak. As we mature, we come to notice the differences in how people say things -- even using the same words said with a different tone of voice leads us to different understandings, right?
Poetry spoken aloud is just this. And such subtle noticings can cue us into whole new worlds of meaning and possibility. Sometimes we discover the map of our world no longer even works and we find ourselves creating a whole new map. Some say the pandemic has done this to us, for us...a paradigm shift, whole new sets of values emerging for individuals and collectives.
My own biblical research has opened me more and more to the fun punnery of many of the stories we take for granted today. The Eden story is full of puns -- the story is meant to elicit laughter. But not just any laughter...laughter aimed at meaning, at discovering possibilities in one's own life. The story is really hilarious. And beautiful. And exceedingly clever in its punnery.
May our lives be so rich!
We invite you to such a feast of sounds and food...
this Sat, May 27...
The Inaugural VITALLY Wild Poetry Party
& Salute to Mike Eck, VITALITY co-founder
special lunch-potluck party
at Gorman Heritage Farm,
12 – 1:15pm ET -- potluck
1:15 - 2:45pm -- honoring Mike Eck for his many contributions to VITALITY, recognizing the bestsellers of vitalitybuzz.org, and an invitation to read a poem you wrote or you like, all invited to enjoy listening to these sounds aimed at meaning
All welcome! RSVP appreciated!
The sounds and moves Mike Eck has put into our world the past 13 years inspire. We look forward to sharing a bit more about all that very soon too, and even more at the party.
What might become possible for human life on this planet if we attuned our ears, our eyes, our hearts and whole selves to listening with playful possibility?
Brian Shircliff
mama
Happy Mothers' Day!
Mother. Mom. Mama. Ma.
It's a day we give thanks to those who birthed us and nurtured us into life when we were helpless. Someone who got us through it....
Most other mammals stand and walk within minutes of birth. For humans, it's another whole year and more before that happens.
We are born entirely helpless.
We cannot feed ourselves, clean ourselves, protect ourselves.
Someone else had to do all of that for us. And, yes, we learned to take on those projects day by day, over a span of years.
All other mammals do too of course, though they seem much more ready than we humans are. We who are born helpless eventually have the most complex nervous systems of all mammals. Remarkable, really.
Without someone in our life in those early years, we would've died quickly.
And so today we salute and celebrate all who not only birthed us but also kept us alive, got us through those precarious early days of life.
I love my mom very much and enjoy being with her (dad too!), and I know not everyone has that relationship with their parents. Perhaps we can find gratitude for all who birthed us into life and all who got us through it, who helped us to arrive to the moment when we could care for ourselves and make choices for ourselves about how we care for ourselves. How we learn to love ourselves....
It takes a village, the old saying goes. And such growth never really stops, right?
Perhaps you're feeling the nudge for some self-care for yourself, some gentle love for yourself? You could make that choice for yourself...the power is all yours now.
Tuesday is our monthly opportunity to come in and explore a Healing Touch session for yourself. Healing Touch was begun by nurses in hospitals for pain-relief and anxiety-relief. It's lovely and loving.
We have a 5:30pm and a 6:30pm session available. $20 donation requested. Reply to this email to reserve your spot.
Would a 45-minute relaxation session while you rest clothed on a comfy massage table and a well-trained friend or two nurtures you be some simple self-care you're looking for? To come to know even more your power for change and love and nurturing in our shared village on this amazing planet Earth?
Brian Shircliff
PS...we're inching closer to Sat, May 27...
The Inaugural VITALLY Wild Poetry Awards
& Salute to Mike Eck, VITALITY co-founder
special lunch-potluck party
at Gorman Heritage Farm, 12 – 3pm ET
all welcome! RSVP appreciated!
the wisdom of children
I delight in watching my nephews and friends' and family's kids grow.
In a recent conversation with a friend, she mentioned how going for a walk in her neighborhood as an adult is fine. It can be lovely, maybe noticing one new flower or exhilarating in movement. The whole experience might take 20 minutes, and then we're off to the next thing on the list.
But, as she went on to say, walk with a toddler within an even smaller area and be led to two hours of wonder.
Every little bug, every stick that needs to be picked up and poked playfully at something, every dog that needs to be talked to and petted, every flower to be touched and sniffed, every breeze that stirs up the leaves and trash in such chase-worthy ways.
The toddler notices so much for the first time, delights in it, is curious about it.
Some say that this is the heart of the Feldenkrais Method and Bones for Life...a curiosity discovered within oneself, all at first guided by a friend's gentle voice but then....voom...you're off on your own world of discovery.
Last week I told you about the power of the Powers cousins with Kyle's new book being released this week, a book so playfully and beautifully illustrated by Katie Brobst. Rodney the Rhino Just Can't Win.
But Rodney does win. Rodney does. And so can we when we follow his wisdom and discover a curiosity for something and follow it as far it playfully leads us.
We hope you'll consider purchasing it and reading it and sharing it with someone you love, kid or adult. Purchases benefit the authors and VITALITY -- we share the profits. VITALITY's portion gets put back into our sharing holistic self-care opportunities around Cincinnati/N. Kentucky and around the world with Zoom.
And we encourage you to purchase VITALITY's kids' book bundle and get
Rodney the Rhino Just Can't Win
by Kyle Powers & Katie Brobst
Adventures of Hope: A New Family for Hopi
by Shannon M. Petree, True J. Knowles, & Jessi Journey
With You in Our Dreams…a reading & coloring book for all ages
by Mike Eck & Claire Long
Buy the bundle and save $8.88!
May we all be delighted in something wonderful today. And become children all over again, even for one curiously beautiful moment.
Brian Shircliff
PS...Sat, May 27 is getting closer and closer...
The Inaugural VITALLY Wild Poetry Awards
& Salute to Mike Eck, VITALITY co-founder
special lunch-potluck party
at Gorman Heritage Farm, 12 – 3pm ET
(what a place to be delighted!)
all welcome! RSVP appreciated!
challenge yourself with friends
The pandemic did a doozy to us. Still is.
I've written about it here before for sure. But each day I'm struck more and more by how much it has changed the ways we live.
I talked with a gentleman yesterday who manages a parking lot of a downtown gym. He said the lot used to be full by day, empty by night.
But now it's empty by day, full at night. And not so much for the gym as for the bar and restaurant nearby.
Working from home, working less, working...?
I know my life was changed from working only in person to most of it now by Zoom.
I miss much of the banter with clients and friends between classes and sessions, those little conversations while people put their shoes on or cleaned their cup from the tea we shared.
But I do love the international capabilities of Zoom...to be able to have experiences of moving and breathing and resting together, in real time, with new friends all over the world, each of us in the comfort of our homes. It seems revolutionary, really. Somatic explorations are revolutionary, after all...they invite us to revisit moves that we made as babies and toddlers. And something about that revisiting in gentle and easy ways can return us to innocence...a time long before the grave stresses we adults experience routinely.
When we were babies and toddlers, we faced the challenge of confronting the greatest force of our lives...gravity. No one on the planet gets around it...but we can find clever ways to stand up in all that we can be. Bones. Standing up in relationship with gravity develops our bones.
After teaching Feldenkrais and Bones for Life via Zoom most days, I usually like to head to a coffeshop to remind myself that we humans have dimension, that we are not only in our little Zoom-rectangles. Sometimes I strike up conversions with strangers who become friends. But that's not so easy anymore either. Buds often in, wrapped in our own music, our own podcast, our own show. Even in an afternoon coffeeshop.
Change.
Change can be hard.
Well, there's great opportunity with change too. I don't know about you, but I'm trying to embrace every opportunity to upgrade my nervous system, my whole self. Language studies, taking more walks both for bone-health and for marinating in new seasons, more Feldenkrais and Bones for Life movement classes, reading books outside my usual peripheries...my curiosity is getting piqued.
Why not, right?
As one of my dear clients reminds me, "If not now, when?"
Well, our friends at Future Life Now with whom we share so much Bones for Life are offering a challenge that begins tomorrow/Saturday, May 6.
I'm looking forward to it and hope you'll join me with friends all over the world to discover together what is possible. Maybe you're curious too...about how Slowcould be the new Fast?
Hmm...
Join in and find out.
The Summit this year costs only $10, with the opportunity to upgrade. I upgraded because it gave me access to some very cool 'best of' presentations from previous summits. VITALITY has always committed to sharing with you affordable opportunities for self-care, for change.
https://www.futurelifenow-online.com/sp/move-better-feel-better-2023-lay/
What are you discovering is possible for you with this new opportunity, this new era of human life on this beautiful Earth?
Brian Shircliff
we've got the Powers!
We've got the Powers!
Well, that's a rich statement.
Last year, Krista Powers published her Midlife Calm: An Alternative to Midlife Crisis with our publishing company, VITALITY buzz, bliss + books. It grew to be our best selling book of 2022!
And for good reason. Krista reminded us that each one of us has the power to find calm within, no matter the circumstances, no matter our age. For sure, we are all always in 'midlife.' Krista's personal story of finding calm through illness, through grief, through the ebbs and flows of relationships, through career change can inspire all of us to discover the resources for calm and wisdom within ourselves...and how.
And this year, another Powers has come to VITALITY buzz, bliss + books to publish another inspiration. Kyle Powers' Rodney the Rhino Just Can't Win is being printed as we speak - available next week!
It's such an inspiring story for kids and adults alike about discovering one's gifts, and beautifully illustrated by Katie Brobst.
Cousins Krista and Kyle remind us all that we have the power within for living a rich life of wonder, of luxuriating in the simplest and most important resources within...one's beating heart and ability to move, the lifebreath we all share, our discovery that we always have choices and can invent even more. Powerful!
How will you know a little more your power for goodness today?
Brian Shircliff
(photos of Krista and Kyle below provided by the authors)
never gets old
Spring never gets old.
Well, that has a few ways about it, doesn't it?
And yet it's the same old wind that blows.
Hmmm. The very wind that animates you and me and all creatures on this planet can be the inspiration for great ideas too.
Join us tonight and discover what the wind blows your way?
Tuesday/today beginning at 6:30pm ET via Zoom, led by Penny
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86501049196?pwd=M09nenVwU3RPWUNsN3dZSUw4QXNQZz09
Meeting ID: 865 0104 9196
Passcode: 215933
$10 donation requested (one option is to pay by clicking here); RSVP appreciated by replying to this email
Zero journaling experience needed. Whatever shows up on the page is a gift...all welcome.
The wind that animates these Spring flowers to dance is the same wind that sustains you and me and might even move you to write tonight...whatever it is that you need to know...
Brian Shircliff
a branch
Spring continues to do its incredible thing here in the Ohio River Valley.
I love how it sends out its branches to us, how the season unfurls possibilities for us.
Tomorrow/Tuesday is our monthly opportunity to come in and explore a Healing Touch session for yourself.
We have one 5:30pm and one 6:30pm session available. $20 donation requested. Reply to this email to reserve your spot.
Would a 45-minute relaxation session while you rest clothed on a comfy massage table be a Spring-branch you're looking for?
Brian Shircliff
want a whole toolkit that makes pain go away?
When those aches and pains creep in, what do you do?
Would you like an easy-to-learn toolkit that reduces pain and anxiety and tension?
Healing Touch Level 1 includes twelve -- TWELVE!! -- techniques that are highly effective at helping you and your loved ones feel better.
And who better to share them with you this month than VITALITY-friend Stephanie Beck Borden.
Stephanie has been studying Healing Touch ever since VITALITY began and has decided to follow in Mary Duennes' footsteps and become an instructor.
The April 29-30 Level 1 class will be Stephanie's first class teaching the whole weekend class as Mary passes the teaching-torch to Stephanie.
Emergency room nurse Janet Mentgen began Healing Touch Program in the 1990's by collecting ideas and techniques and understandings of the leading holistic practitioners of her day. She tried them out in emergency room and patient care situations and found them extraordinarily effective -- so she trained the next generation of instructors in these techniques.
Mary Duennes learned from Janet and honed the teaching of these techniques for decades and now she passes them onto Stephanie to bring forward for all of us.
Healing Touch Level 1
Sat-Sun, April 29-30
8am - 6pm, both days
at VITALITY (Walnut Hills/Cincinnati)
cost = $497*
*thanks to the Peter Buswinka Healing Touch Fund we have some work-scholarships available -- reply to this email to apply
Like Mary, Stephanie is a brilliant teacher. And Healing Touch Level 1 is so rich and wonderful. I've taken the class many times and appreciate just how wise the material is.
And the Healing Touch material is organized in such smart adult-learning ways. Just when you feel a little sleepy you get to lie down clothed on a comfy massage table while a classmate practices the techniques with you, and then you switch roles after your little nap on the table. And Stephanie voice-guides you through it all -- so nice and easy.
Last day to register for this class is coming up, and due to space constraints, we have room for a very limited number of participants for this first whole class shared by Stephanie.
Is this what your deepest self craves this Spring...a way to move through life with a freer spirit and a whole toolkit of holistic goodness you can share with family and friends?
Brian Shircliff
life's a party
The gift of a good party is that you don't really know what will happen.
Sure, the party host can plan a few things, provide some hospitality, etc. But when it comes down to it, the gift of a good party is its unpredictability.
What will be the sentence that everyone busts out with laughter in reaction?
What will be the sentence that silences everyone gratefully, that draws forward that gleam in every single eye?
Such deep knowings.
When we began in 2010, we gathered in a living room every week or so and dreamed together. Some relatives and friends of those gathered even said that 'VITALITY' -- our dreams -- could not be done.
But here we are in 2023 celebrating our 13th year, and wondering what the wind will call us to next.
Mike Eck was there in that living room. And the dreams he brought to life were just ideas in 2010. And now we celebrate him as the one who began gleaning in Southwest Ohio...a dream and reality that has created jobs and fed thousands of people farm-fresh food that would have gone to waste if volunteers had not gleaned it and brought it to gourmet chefs at La Soupe and food pantries and soup kitchens to turn into nutritious meals.
Mike is also now a published author, a poet, something he readily tells people he never dreamed in 2010. Check out the poem & coloring book he and his friend Claire Long created in 2021. With You in Our Dreams. Yes. The photo below is from their celebration. Another party, another unexpected gift.
Our Board had a small celebration of Mike's 13 years of service to VITALITY's Board as he 'retires' to dream up more and more good ideas. We hope you'll join us to celebrate Mike at a bigger gathering -- mark your calendar now please:
Sat, May 27
The Inaugural VITALLY Wild Poetry Awards
& Salute to Mike Eck, VITALITY co-founder
special lunch-potluck party
at Gorman Heritage Farm, 12 - 3pm ET
all welcome!
Come read your own poem and we'll celebrate you. Or invite a poet to read a poem and we'll celebrate them. Or come and simply enjoy!
Perhaps you feel called to join the journaling-circle tonight. Penny is our host, and she has a special way of inviting everyone to dream and wonder and even create. Hope you'll consider joining us at 6:30 pm ET via Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86501049196?pwd=M09nenVwU3RPWUNsN3dZSUw4QXNQZz09
Meeting ID: 865 0104 9196
Passcode: 215933
Life is a party and you never know what gift might show up...!
Brian Shircliff
