Cross-Training Body Mind Emotions Spirit | Rachael R. Resch

Happy New Year!

. . . Whatever that means.

It might mean another holy every day opportunity to be here now and celebrate together the preciousness of what is happening.  “Happy” and “happen” are from  Middle English hap, meaning “happen,” as well as “good luck.”  So “happiness” means “happen-ness” and “lucky.”  It’s the fortunate state of being present with what is happening.

This season, we could great each other warmly and say, “Happen New Year!”

Blessings on all that is happening.  Blessings on all that has happened, making it possible for us to be happening now.  Blessings on all that will and might some day possibly happen.  Blessings on our vision as we look forward into life.

At the end of the Nia New Year’s Eve event, Vision 2010, I asked my mother to choose the focus from a basket of over 375 cards which had just been created as foci for the new year.

Every Nia practice begins with a focus.  The practice of the Nia focus is to consciously embody and sustain where we put our attention and intent.

All thirty-plus people in the room had just participated in an hour of Nia, followed by a body-based inquiry process.

They had asked their bodies questions like, “Body, what do you love?”  “Body, what brings you the sensation of stability?”  “Body, what brings you the sensation of peace?”  “Body, for your spiritual transformation, what do you desire?”

Each person then wrote the essence of  their body’s answers onto the backs of cards hand-stamped with the Nia swoosh.

My mother chose at random from the basket the focus for Nia Southern Oregon for 2010:  Be In Nature, Feel Nature.

Be in nature.  Feel nature.

What could be better than the loving reminder not only to uproot myself from the computer and daily busyness to touch, smell, see and hear the natural world, but to also touch smell, see and hear my very own nature, and the natural world all around me every moment that has been conscripted into houses, desks, refrigerators, pots and pans, running water, clothing, vitamins, pens, cell phones, cars, asphalt, glass.

So this morning, my husband, Richard, took me on a walk in the park.  It was rainy and the world smelled moist and fresh.  The sound of Ashland Creek cleared my head and my heart.

Be in nature.  Be nature.

Happy New Year.