the present is bright
I've noticed that when the light changes through the seasons of the year that some things stand out more than others. You too?
Even in a sea of green, like in the photo above, something catches my eye, my attention, and I begin to become curious about it.
Perhaps as the light shifts with the Summer Solstice, each one of us has an opportunity to wonder about what stands out now as important.
What is capturing your curiosity?
What is yours to do this new season? Maybe your heart has been calling you to something new...to finally step foward into some new activity or relationship you've always wanted to explore.
How do you want to be this new season? Maybe your heart has been reminding you that you are ever so wise when you do nothing and simply sit, stare out the window awhile, hold a cup of tea, feel the breeze.
Our Summer Solstice Zoom Party will be led by the wonderful and wise Penny Costilla. It's always a lovely circle of friends with whom to wonder together about the present season, the brightness it offers...
tomorrow/Tues, June 21 at 6:30pm ET
- offered by donation -
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86501049196?pwd=M09nenVwU3RPWUNsN3dZSUw4QXNQZz09
Meeting ID: 865 0104 9196
Passcode: 215933
...come see what shows up on your journaling page to help you enjoy the light of the new season.
The present is bright -- even more so with friends with whom to discover.
Brian Shircliff
PS And remember this Thursday, June 23...
Krista Powers' Midlife Calm: An Alternative to Midlife Crisis Book Release Party from 6 - 8pm at the home of Ryan Messer and Jimmy Musuraca (992 Marion Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio). Open House, family friendly, business/summer fun/and casual attire. Krista will say a few words around 6:45pm. Books will be available for pick up or purchase ($20 + tax) and Krista is happy to sign. A kid's table will be provided with bookmarks to color and take home. All are welcome!!
finding calm and retreat within
We've been busy bees with our publishing efforts this Spring!
In addition to converting all of our books into e-books and print-on-demand possibilities, VITALITY buzz, bliss + books announces two books now making their way out into the world...
Evan Underbrink's Milford: A poet's life in spiritual retreat
and
Krista Powers' Midlife Calm: An Alternative to Midlife Crisis
They are wonderful books to help us all find calm and goodness within...perhaps they inspire you to write something too!
Krista invites you to join us to celebrate her book...
"Thursday, June 23: Book Release Party from 6 - 8pm at the home of Ryan Messer and Jimmy Musuraca (992 Marion Ave, Cincinnati, Ohio). Open House, family friendly, business/summer fun/and casual attire. I will say a few words around 6:45pm. Books will be available for pick up or purchase ($20 + tax) and I will be happy to sign. A kid's table will be provided with bookmarks to color and take home."
So fun! And wait until you read these books, friends -- impressive!
May they help to usher in a new season for human life on this amazing planet Earth!
Brian Shircliff
PS Summer Solstice Zoom Party led by the wonderful Penny Costilla is fast approaching! Tues, June 21 at 6:30pm...come see what shows up on your journaling page to help you enjoy the light of the new season!
And check out this interview with Krista about her book -- click here!
what would happen
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priceless gifts...share yours, we'll share ours
click here to see the video above!
___ times call for ___ measures.
We all could fill in these blanks with something important…something that needs to be heard around the world. And it’s time we do.
Hear us out on this…some priceless news we have to share.
Life is spinning pretty wildly, in various pleasant and unpleasant ways. Yes?
We all have gifts that we offer and could offer…to make the journey beautiful, interesting, richer, transformative toward a new way forward for us all. Yes?
Priceless gifts.
And by sharing these gifts something important might happen for all of us on the planet. Yes?
Well, we have decided to take our VITALITY Yoga Immersions & Training in a (re)new(ed) direction…to discover what could be possible on planet Earth with a worldwide group of people committed to sharing their gifts in their own neighborhoods. In some important ways, we're getting back to our roots at VITALITY.
You might be interested, a friend might be interested. Maybe both of you?
Please do share our news…that we’re offering our 14th Yoga Training for no tuition…instead a commitment of service, a sharing of your gifts and time...and you're welcome to bring friends along to help you.
Join Tonia Smith and me as we tell you all about it and give you some free experiences this week…zero experience required with VITALITY's very different style yoga that you can do on a bed or carpeted floor or in the grass...you don't even need a yoga mat:
Tues, May 3 at 11am ET
I'm offering a Feldenkrais-inspired yoga class…and how VITALITY’s moving-breathing-resting reaches back to the roots of yoga
Thurs, May 5 at 6:00pm ET
Tonia Smith offers an experience of Neuro Linguistic Programming...meditation wisdom to get you where you want to go in your life
Join Zoom Meeting
(same link for both meetings)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83251609291?pwd=eng4NFVydVMvaVgyTC9GRHFRQ1NpZz09
Meeting ID: 832 5160 9291
Passcode: 367969
We'll be ready to share more information about the program and answer questions too.
There are things each one of us could do to improve life on this planet for all of us, for each of us.
Will VITALITY’s Yoga Circle this year offer an important push toward birthing a new age, toward more and more of us awakening to the equal-value we humans share with all life on the planet, toward ending hunger and poverty and war and global warming…who knows?
One thing's for sure...we're going to find out together!
Brian Shircliff
PS...how did you fill in the blanks above? I'd love to hear from you. I think I'm leaning toward 'inviting' in both of the blanks.
the hope in your back pocket
I’m grateful I have interesting friends…
especially ones who know the old(er) stories.
Each day, though, I find myself growing into that old(er) category, and yet those old(er) stories revive me, give me hope, renew a youthfulness in me.
A friend of mine recently told me about how, during the Vietnam War, some friends of his got into a fight. It was a tumultuous time, I’m told. I was born during the war.
What made the fight memorable for my friend was that those who were fighting were not only peaceful protestors, they were the organizers for the peaceful demonstration. Imagine!
My friend found himself losing hope quickly — until he read William Lynch’s Images of Hope. Do you know that book? I’ve loved it since first coming across it in the college library.
Lynch makes the point, during his own reflecting on times of desolation in his own life, that the way through despair is through it — take one step forward. It’s enough to inspire some hope. Do some small and positive act, anything.
Then take another step, and then another step — each one inviting more and more hope.
Before you know it, Lynch points out, you’re through it. Even the smallest of steps is a step in a new direction, toward a new horizon and possibility.
Next week we’ll have some amazing news to offer about our 2022 Yoga Circle — it’s an opportunity that invites a new step, hope, not only for those who participate...for the world.
This will be our 14th offering of this opportunity — 13 yoga-circles over the past dozen years that have changed me each time. Each participant’s experience and unique voice have inspired in me hope for the future — even when the news channels report otherwise.
My friend from the Vietnam era told me that simply having a copy of Lynch’s book nearby -- even in his back pocket -- reminded him that hope was possible, was real.
In our Yoga Circle this summer, we won’t need a book nearby to remind us of hope because we’ll have each other…and the power of moving and breathing and resting and contemplating and growing together. Stay tuned!
Let’s dream a new world into being…let it unfurl us into something so stunningly beautiful, flowers of our new season.
Brian Shircliff
513.300.5174
P.S. And remember to sign up for this gift:
Circumnavigate the 🌏 with Feldenkrais®
Join me and thousands of others online May 1-2
🕰 48 hours of Awareness Through Movement®.
A different lesson and teacher at the top of every hour.
Free on Zoom.
Beginners and experienced welcome with lessons for all 🏳️🌈.
👉 Learn more or sign up here:
https://vitality--futurelifenow.thrivecart.com/2022-unlimited-digital-access-atm-oto/
The above is an affiliate link...so if you purchase the Unlimited Digital Access, VITALITY benefits!
all around the world
Zoom has certainly helped us to know something more of the larger world!
Recently I was teaching Bones for Life with a gathering of friends, all of us Bouncing on Heels all over Earth...and I got to watch the sun come up in Australia tomorrow.
Yes! Tomorrow! I got to see tomorrow!
I'm grateful to so many of you for RSVPing for the big party this Sat, April 16...potluck-picnic from 12:30 - 2:30pm ET at Gorman Farm Pavilion. Now we know how much cake and cookies to have ready to PARTY!! If you forgot to RSVP, you're still welcome to join us. It's a PARTY! All welcome.
As you know, at the party we're celebrating Richard Bollman SJ and Mary Duennes -- two incredible humans who have shared their wisdom all over the world...Mary taught Healing Touch in Africa, Richard shared his way into the Spiritual Exercises in Asia. And we all know how much they've shaped our Cincinnati too!
And have you heard about another worldwide gathering about to happen soon?
Circumnavigate the 🌏 with Feldenkrais®
Join me and thousands of others online May 1-2
🕰 48 hours of Awareness Through Movement®.
A different lesson and teacher at the top of every hour.
Free on Zoom.
Beginners and experienced welcome with lessons for all 🏳️🌈.
👉 Learn more or sign up here:
https://vitality--futurelifenow.thrivecart.com/2022-unlimited-digital-access-atm-oto/
How important we gather locally and how important we meet around the world -- grow our visions of life and all it can be, and all WE can be, today and tomorrow!
Brian Shircliff
513.300.5174
P.S. The above is an affiliate link...so if you purchase the Unlimited Digital Access, VITALITY benefits!
party 1, party 2, party 3 -- hooray!
No foolin' here, we love to party!
Party 1 and Party 2 are now going to be one big massive incredibly fun party...
celebrating and thanking Mary Duennes and Richard Bollman SJ for helping to found VITALITY and ushering us into our second decade:
Sat, April 16...potluck-picnic from 12:30 - 2:30pm ET at Gorman Farm Pavilion
RSVP appreciated so we have plenty of delicious cake!
And as for Party 3...hope you're considering joining our next Bones for Life Immersions hosted by our friends at Future Life Now. Did you catch the free livecasts? Check out these three friends sharing their experiences by clicking here - enjoy!
It's time to party, right? Celebrate goodness and growth with us so that goodness grows in the world!
Brian Shircliff
513.300.5174
VITALITY friends CJ, Richard, and Mary below at previous parties...put yourself in the picture with them April 16! And the cake!!!! :)
catch up on the replay...and stronger bones today!
I had so much fun at Tuesday's free livecast -- hope you did too!
If you missed it, the replay will be available for a few days, so catch it while you can and hear how my own yoga 'practice' has evolved -- and how I'm stronger and more tuned into my body. I kinda prefer to call it my yoga 'play'...but whatever word works best for you.
TODAY, TODAY, TODAY Cynthia Allen rounds out the 3-part Series with a talk about Osteoporosis and how every human eventually gets it.
But there are some great things we can do to prevent it!
Join us live at 10am ET for a chat and a few more movement processes that relieve pain and help with our walking so we can build bone on this gravity-rich planet. Walking well builds bone!
If you've already registered for the 3-part Series, then you have the Zoom link for today and the link for the yoga-replay. If not, register by clicking here.
Bones for Life is life-changing -- and will put a smile on your face the more and more you delve into it!
Brian Shircliff
Bones for Life is the original yoga???
Cynthia kicked off our annual free 3-part Bones for Life series with an inspiring start!
So many great #bigaha moments from the session -- people finding relief from pain that has been with them for years, sometimes decades.
Could it really be that simple? That a few gentle moves and a specific way of inviting that movement could resolve chronic pain -- and prevent it?
Come find out as I offer something for neck and shoulder pain tomorrow/Tuesday at 10am ET.
Quite honestly, this little process I'll offer also resolves my foot and ankle pain too.
I'll also talk about how this system of movement we call Bones for Life could be hinting at the original yoga...something missed by most of today's 21st century yoga.
You can register for tomorrow's session by clicking here...and you'll be able to catch the replay of Cynthia's session too.
I do hope you'll join me live at 10am -- it's so much more fun to see you live, even by Zoom. :)
Luxuriate in the gentle, helpful change Bones for Life offers!
Brian Shircliff
the power of a circle
There was a time a few years ago after a vipassana retreat that I started thinking that all these healing modalities emerging in the 21st century, at their essence, went back to Jesus and Buddha (Gautama was his name) and the circles they invited where ideas were shared.
Hands-on healing of all types, meditation of nearly every sort, centering prayer…even tai chi and the many martial arts have some of their energetic wisdom and style of self-awareness in what Gautama was bringing forward. And of course Gautama had studied the yoga of his day and found it too torturous…his influence on yoga after that was quiet and profound and led to the revolution in yoga that grew to be friendlier to oneself.
Jesus’ reliance on the ‘wind alone’ — YAHWEH — is similar to Gautama’s wisdom found through breathing, right? And Jesus seems to be a bit different in that he uses his hands to give people a taste of the life-breath’s power and its dependability. It is said that the later tai chi masters who harnessed the wind so well could be felt walking down the street -- even heard -- through the sound-vibrations that came from the palms of their hands. Seems incredible, yes?
Jesus even offers funny little stories and wild experiments taking nothing along for a journey to wake people up to what really rules and what dependably provides — the wind alone.
Jesus and Gautama followed no gurus…and suggested we don’t either. “You are the salt of the Earth…the spice of life!”
Jesus and Gautama were not after belief…they were inviting people to KNOW through their own experience, through their own sensation…so different from the later schools of their disciples advocating belief and ritual and reverence for the guru and all manners of sillinesses to maintain one’s standing as a disciple.
With their circles, Jesus and Buddha were bringing forward in (re)new(ed) ways what they had inherited from previous wisdom-circles.
Study the Bible and study Gautama’s story and its plain to see, these wisdom circles have been around a long, long time…much longer than Jesus and Gautama. Biblically speaking, centuries before Jesus’ time, the prophet guilds and the prophets’ wild poetry are talked about much — though very few people today talk about those prophet communities and the supreme cleverness of their poetry. And these prophet circles seem to allow anyone and everyone to enter, to make their home in them.
To be a ‘prophet’ all one had to do was be in relationship with the wind. And when they did that in the ancient world and when we do that today, some pretty incredible things happen.
Who is considered the greatest storyteller of the Bible, perhaps even of all time? A woman known to us only as J, the story crafter of most of Genesis, the origin stories of the prophets. Who is considered the greatest poet of the Bible? A woman known to us only as Second Isaiah, whose poems — prophetic speech — were attached onto the scroll after Isaiah of Jerusalem’s poems, sadly without her name.
There’s power in a circle who welcomes everyone, allows everyone to be named and heard and celebrated. There’s power in friends listening to and feeling and sometimes even seeing the wind together…coming to larger and larger senses of the Whole, THE ALL.
And that’s what you and I are doing in this VITALITY circle, that’s what you and I are doing — hopefully — in any and every circle. We share ideas with each other. We live in ways that invite friends to an experience of themselves in order to know even more deeply their own personal wholeness and the wholeness in which we all have our being. And the circle welcomes all ideas to be tried on, wondered about, conversed about…that each person might discover what works best for themself.
There’s wisdom in a circle — as our new Mission and Vision invite. Click here and check it out!
Our circle meets nearly every day, in person and via Zoom. Swim in, swim out. Meet new friends and long-time friends. Share ideas around the world and from around the world.
Let’s discover what’s possible!
Brian Shircliff
513.300.5174
