RAIN-A practice of radical Compassion

-popularized by Tara Brach, this practice helps you become for conscious of navigating your response to shame and big emotions. RAIN can be done in meditation or anytime you find yourself navigating big feelings. The basic steps are to R-recognize, A-allow, I-investigate, and N-nurture what is unfolding in the present moment.

METTA-Lovingkindness practice

Metta is a concentration and mindfulness practice that invites the practitioner into a more loving, connected state of mind. In metta meditation, we wish happiness, safety, and ease toward ourselves and others. In the most common version of metta practice, we offer these feelings of goodwill through the use of simple phrases first to ourselves, and in succession to someone we love, someone we’re indifferent towards, someone we consider a “difficult person,” and finally to all beings, everywhere.

JOY

Through our meditation practice, we can consciously cultivate the natural well-being and joy that we were born with. Using mindful attention, we can directly experience the aliveness of genuine well-being in the body, mind, and heart as we connect with the goodness inside and around us. To access this natural joy, we don’t merely know we’re feeling good; we actually feel what it’s like to feel good.

Without efforting to make something happen, we can invite well-being and joy by simply inclining our mind in that direction as we connect with what brings us delight and appreciation, letting ourselves mindfully relax into it when it is here. Our own well-being and joy can be a gift to others as it awakens those qualities in those around us.

FORGIVENESS

Often our deepest suffering is the sense that something we have done—something about us—is fundamentally wrong and unacceptable. Finding a way to make peace with our human imperfections is the ground of all healing.

True Forgiveness does not deny the suffering of the past but has tremendous dignity and courage and power of love in it, That says….we will, and can, start again. -Jack Kornfield-

My life’s passion is practicing, studying, and inspiring a deeper sense of connection with ones’ true nature.

I became a devout student of yoga, meditation, and all things healing after my first yoga class at 18 years old in 1995.  This was a new world for me as I grew up  in a conservative farming community in Northern Indiana where I had NO exposure to anything Eastern at all.

A year later,  my father and I took my first trip to Nepal where I was able to witness cultures approaching their life from a place of sacred reverence. This mind blowing travel exposed me to Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese medicine, and the amazing energy of the Himalayan mountains. I was really never the same after discovering yoga and visiting Asia. In spiritual circles, it would be said that I had a soul-awakening. 

It became clear to me that life was more than chasing money, accumulating things, and looking for happiness to come from the outside of me.  I knew in my heart that I wanted to be in deeper connection to the sacred aspects of life and to inspire this in others. 

30 years later…….I’ve made my life a practice of using whatever shows up on my path as an opportunity for spiritual growth and deeper connection. Professionally, I have dedicated my healing practice to help others awawaken to the gifts of their lives.

I’m incredibly grateful for my many teachers and community!! I have studied and been inspired by the great traditions of Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zen, and Indigenous Earth Wisdom. I do not consider myself a certain religion, but simply that my religion is kindness. I believe we are each sacred beings with an innate goodness to our hearts.

The great teachers that have specifically influenced my life are; Amma, Neem Keroli Baba, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Ram Dass,  the Dalia Lama, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Jill Satterfield, and Adyashanti. I have also been deeply touched by the teachers in my life who have shown up as my husband, daughter, parents, family, friends, healers, patients, pets, antagonists, and all of nature.

We each need one other to help us remember our basic good nature, the interconnectedness of life, and to use whatever shows up in our life as an opportunity for growth.

By now…you are probably getting the picture that I am kind of crazy for all things sacred….which is all things, if you practice the perspective of holding this very moment as sacred. 

I believe and try to emanate that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. That our basic nature is to be loving. 

And just like you, I am human, I forget and get caught in my thoughts, the dominant cultures ideas of how I should be,  I have my triggers, baggage from my upbringing, and moments of holding too tight and trying to control things. However, every morning I start again by dedicating myself to cultivating self awareness, to serving others, and to being kind with the clunkiness of being an imperfect human. 

I have been teaching yoga, meditation, qigong and healthy living since 2000.

I currently am a co-practice leader for the Dharma kids program at Kagyu Sakyu Choling in Ashland, Oregon and am finishing up at teacher certification with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield to be a certified Mindfulness meditation teacher.

Thank you for reading about me and I wish you many blessings.

Clark’s mindfulness journey and teaching…