The Red Tent Temple Movement
November 17, 2009 by Coach Margie
Filed under Health & Wellness, Self Development, celebrations, personal growth, relationships, retreat, self empowerment
Awhile back a Facebook friend, and fellow Womyn’s Circle facilitator that I originally met back East in what now seems like life times ago, posted a link to a movement that she is starting, called the Red Tent Temple Movement. ALisha Starkweather is well known as an extraordinary and skilled facilitator for personal and global transformation and is the founder of the Women’s Belly and Womb Conference and Daughters of the Earth Gatherings; a Women’s Tribal Event, and her Priestess Path Apprenticeship.
ALisa says, ”
“The Red Tent Temple Movement is a way for women to gather our inner momentum, that feeling like the time is now, and to authentically come forward with everything we are as women. It gives us a place to incubate, dream, slow down, without an agenda or plan. It is a woman space where we can share stories, laughter, songs, food and honor our unique feminine cycles that we experience each month, whether we are in our bleeding time or going through peri-menopause and menopause. The Temple provides a way that is more consistent with our actual rhythms, cycles and ways of being in relationship to each other that support, foster and give us strength and courage.
It is time. The women are ready to co-create a vision in the societies we live in and make a place among us where women are honored by honoring our own unique journeys of womanhood. Join us in a revolutionary act. It is more than a woman’s circle. It is a deep learning process of unlearning the busy and finding the moment.
Inside the Red Tents we give ourselves time to remember who we are at our very core, while honoring that to remember we must turn from our identities and roles towards the innermost temple of our own hearts. Come into the Red Tent and stop. In the quiet and sometimes celebratory company of wonderful women, feel. In what you feel, there is much that is waiting for you.”
I am pleased, and happy, about bringing a Red Tent Temple to my local community of Bisbee, AZ. It’s important. It’s time. Womyn need a place to come together, to gather, to reconnect. We live in such crazy times, and our ancient ways of womynhood and divine feminine experiences are getting lost. As we struggle to fit into the boxes of societies demands and our various roles, the essence of our authentic spirit cries out to be heard and attended to. Come to the Temple. Relax. Unwind. Be nurtured by other womyn. Share stories and wisdom. This is how we create, design, and maintain sustainable relationships in our lives. Reconnect to your spirit, your story, your dreams, your purpose. Laugh, Dance and Play. The time is now.
My heart sings in the anticipation of being in your presence inside The BisbeeRed Tent and/or of visiting your Tent wherever you are. Join the movement. Erect a Red Tent in your community.
(The Red Tent of Bisbee, AZ will be starting Dec 15th. Connect with Coach Margie for more information)
Self Ecology, Planetary Sustainability
October 22, 2009 by Coach Margie
Filed under Health & Wellness, Whole Health, nature, personal growth, sustainability
This Summer has involved a lot of pain for me on various levels, as you know if you have been reading my blog. Now, I’m not telling you that to get sympathy or elicit your feeling sorry for me. It’s just fact. It is, what it is, what it is, as my clients often hear me say. Now that I am over the worst of it, I can look back and see what an amazing process it has been and recognize all the growth it has produced. The hugged-to-hard rib is healing, and so is my heart. I’m able to see beyond the intensity of my emotional self and things are looking pretty good!
Recently I found a wonderful piece of poetry, in an old “We-Moon” dayplanner, that I glued into my journal because of it’s perfection with regards to my process. What I have realized, as the seasons change and I come out of this Summer, is that the most important and wise thing I did through it all was to practice radical self care above and beyond any other concern. As I allowed myself to grieve my losses, and cry with the pain, or scream with the agony, and rage with upheaval of it all, I was facilitating a healing process. Had I ignored or denied what my experience was, it only would have come back to haunt me in the future.
This is true for our planet as well. The longer we deny and ignore the undeniable problems we are being confronted with, such as radical climate change, the larger the problem will become. If we accept what is, and set about changing it, then there is some prayer and hope that we just might heal things. In the process we also need to grieve our losses, rage with the absurdity of it all, and shed the tears of despair that rise from the depths of our spirit souls. Arne Naas calls this our Deep Ecology. It’s the place were we realize that we and Earth are one, and in caring for ourselves we care for the planet, and vica-versa.
The poem in the We-Moon calendar (http://www.wemoon.ws/), by Mary Steel, is called Self Ecology, and it speaks to the same thing.
Self Ecology
Without reverence for my
ecological self
without my own inner balance
where I find poise between
the skies of my ambitions
and the requisites of my earthly state
I cannot be that warrior
Without the quiet place reached
in grace and thanksgiving skywards
while the daily needs of my body
her bones, her flesh
draw me earthwards
I cannot engage in planetary survival
Without opening the portals
cosmological to base
in my own energy systems
I cannot go forth
and open the portals
for survival
of our planetary systems
And without standing aside to
watch in peace
the quiet flow of the energy
in my body
and the soft waterfalls of my mind
I cannot be that warrior.
Practicing Self Ecology is a radical act of planetary health care. For, when we understand our own micro-systems and bio-regions and changing seasons, we can better relate to, and want to protect, the natural environment around us.
Here, at Bliss101, we encourage the design of sustainable lives, relationships and environments. Self Ecology/Deep Ecology is a primary cornerstone of the philosophy that motivates and drives my engagement with, and support of, my clients. I invite you to join us on this journey as we move into this critical time on this planet. In the meantime, take good care of yourselves!
The Roller Coaster of Love
July 30, 2009 by Coach Margie
Filed under Health & Wellness, Life Coaching, divorce, emotional energy, personal growth, relationships
The human heart is such a complex thing. It takes us on a wild roller coaster ride that even the most die hard amusement park ride lovers have trouble coping with. Navigating the wild twists and turns, and stomach curling ups and downs, of love can make the best of us green, yet we jump on willingly, even when we know what the ride will be like.
Why do we choose to get on these rides? As a young girl I actually hated the roller coaster. I went on it once and that was enough for me. Give me the gentle ferris wheel any day. When it comes to love, however, I seem to be willing to jump on time and time again, forgetting what it felt like the last time when it all went seriously wrong.
I’m still moving through this thing called divorce. The guy that used to be my partner, my lover, my companion is in the process of packing up all his stuff and “getting the hell outta here’, as he so emphatically stated once. He arrived back home from CA, and from the arms of other womyn, last week. Each day I watch as the places where he used to be, become empty. His half of the closet. The garage (well, at least I can walk through it now!). His office. My heart.
When your heart is aching and bleeding all over the floor, how do you see the gifts of the amazing moment you are in? How do you climb in for the ride and arrive at the end hottin’ and hollerin’, climbing out of that little roller coaster car with a smile on your face and a sense of some sort of accomplishment that you survived?
It’s not easy. But survive we do, and eventually we even get back on again for the ride. What I have discovered in this delirious journey is that as my heart expands and contracts, grieves and mourns, rages and releases, I am being birthed into a new self. What better gift could I ask for? She is resilient and strong, empowered and powerful, broken open and freed. The fog has lifted and the clarity is informing and revealing. Suddenly, my stride has become more purposeful and my vision more clear. I detach from that which has not served me, fed my soul, or honored the magnificence of my feminine self. I feel my feelings with a fierce sense of devotion to the ride and a willingness to see myself through it all.
Currently, I am coaching a couple and am leading a group of womyn in a 6 week adventure of healing our relationships with, and beliefs about, men. Realizing that my personal experience provides a rich foundation for the work I do, and allows me to become a masterful coach in the game of relationships, helps me to enjoy the roller coaster just a little bit more. If my journey can make someone else’s easier, then it’s all worth it.
Even so, I’m thinking it’s going to be along time before I decide to ride this roller coaster again!
The Key To Sustainability-Common Interest
July 21, 2009 by Coach Margie
Filed under Health & Wellness, nature, personal growth, relationships, sustainability
Sustainability. What does it mean? What does it look like? More than just a buzzword, sustainability can be a way of life, a moral obligation, a lifestyle, and even a spiritual practice. Often sustainability is thought of in terms of the environment and what we can be doing to reduce our human impact of it.
But, what does it mean in terms of our personal lives, and within the realm of relationships? How does one practice or integrate sustainability, both from an environmental perspective as well as from a more personal one, into their life?
These questions, and more, were the topic of a recent Cafe Conversation that I host every month. These engaging and provocative Cafe’s provide members of the community the opportunity to come together and share conversations about the deeper, more meaningful topics often not covered in social situations. I have to tell you that this topic was one of the most interesting and energetic ones we have had in our 3 yrs running! This tells me that it is an important one, and one that lots of us need to be having often.
We are in interesting times. The inevitability of Peak Oil looms before us. Global Climate Change is undeniable. The current economic situation has everyone looking at ways to simplify, reduce, save, recycle and whatever else can be done to stretch the dollar just a little bit more. If we are to transition into these times with any semblance of grace, it is absolutely imperative that we have these conversations. We should have been having them years ago, and some of us were. Now it is no longer a luxury.
Sustainability can be defined as the capability to endure as a system to maintain diversity. This is easy to understand in terms of the environment-we need diverse eco-systems to maintain an eclectic array of plant, insect and animal life. What about the sustainability of our own personal and internal ecology?
At the Cafe we decided that individual (my) sustainability, which could also be considered well being, supports the sustainability of the whole. By putting our personal sustainability (evolution?) 1st over the relationship, the family, the community we positively effect those things in regards to their sustainability and growth. (The old put your air mask on first theory.) The connection of personal sustainability and environmental sustainability can not be ignored.
All of this is great, in and of itself. But what holds it all together? We don’t live in a vacuum, so what happens when you have 60 billion people, plus all the other species, trying to survive on this one fantastic planet? The key to true sustainability, we decided at the Cafe, whether you are talking about this whole planet, or the relationship between two people, or even with yourself, is a point of interest that is commonly shared. The point of interest feeds the commitment to sustainability. All the hard work, or all the love in the world doesn’t make a sustainable relationship. Everyone must have the desire, that common point of interest, to see it manifested, to sustain the attention and intention towards the end result of true sustainability.
To tie it all together, the final ingrediante required is a healthy dose of respect. It’s hard to maintain the desire for sustainability on our planet if you don’t respect Mother Earth. Likewise, if you don’t respect yourself, chances are you’re not going to make choices that sustain health, vitality, and other life affirming adjectives, for yourself, or the relationships you are in. This brings up the assumption that sustainability is always a positive thing. Is it possible for negative things to be sustained like ideas, beliefs and thoughts?
Of course it is. It’s probably just not very sustainable.
(Lots of gratitude to the Cafe Conversation participants for their contribution to this blogpost!)
