Month: May 2014

On the Memoir

Posted on by Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, RYT, FAAN

Help me escape

Soothe me through the words of your life

It seems so difficult, what you lived through

Much worse than what I experinced

Or so I think, though I have my own childhood tragedy

A high adverse childhood events score

5 out of 10

I drink your life up in every word on the page

Mary Karr

Barbara Robinette Moss

Jeannette Wallis

Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Koran Zalickas

Maya Angelou

Christa Paravani

Barb Rogers

Donna George

I cry for you and I cry for me

I can’t perhaps always or often feel my own pain

I learned to block parts of it during my childhood

And I block it now in more adult ways

Like work, work, work… and worry

But I can feel yours

Deeply, aching, I cry as I read

My eyes burn and my nose runs,

I wake up in the morning with puffy eyes

The lack of fairness is astounding

The pain astronimical

Your own healing work amazing.

Memoirs ending with some healing, some resilience found

March on sisters, whether in this life or the next

You made a difference for me

In the telling of your story

In your beautiful memoir.

Yoga Class

Posted on by Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, RYT, FAAN

It’s just a yoga class

In a sunshine-y room with a heater on

As the clouds stream by outside

We rest quietly inside

While to world streams by outside

Breathing, focusing, drifting

Soon enough, we move our bodies

Poses into poses

Pausing to breathe, stretch, be here now

It’s just a yoga class

A room filled with 8 women

All of use surely over 45 and maybe up into our 60’s

We are in regular yoga clothes

Nothing fancy or extraordinary

Because it is just a yoga class

In a small town in New England

And we don’t think of yoga as exercise

We honor it as a path toward relaxation and healing

We use kapalbhati breath

Pulling our abdomens back to our spines

Passively inhaling

And I wonder if our skulls really are shining

I shake as always during the holding of the poses

12 years of yoga and still I shake

As if I am still shaking off all of life’s little traumas

In the fine tremors of my body

Finally we come back to the mat

One last twist, be a happy baby

And then, the best, the savasana

It’s just a yoga class

Still as important as any other yoga class

Thank you for practicing, for creating peace ease inside of yourself

Namaste

I stepped out

Posted on by Carey S. Clark, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, RYT, FAAN

I stepped out into the early evening

and the air was warm

the sky a robin’s egg blue

the clouds puffy yet sparse.

*

I stepped out on this fine spring evening

into the feeling of lightness

no coat was required

and love filled my heart.

*

The air and warmth somehow reflected

my deep true intentions for life

warmth, lightness, ease

no need to cover things up.

*

I stepped out and let that evening sunshine in

I smiled from a place deep inside

And I opened my heart to expansion

Of the capacity for love and light.