Today, I wear yellow.
Bright yellow. My skin, my aura, my heart-center all called for yellow, and I said yes.
I wear a bright yellow long dress that flirts at my ankles and cascades behind me like rippling rays of sun.
I water the garden in this dress.
I hunt Whole Foods in this dress (on the energized quest for fresh pressed green juices, summer in a bottle. I’m obsessed!).
I nap in this dress and when I awaken, I feel as if I’m emerging anew, almost like I ventured to another dimension, and returned to my pale yellow room refreshed and mended back to wholeness. Like all my pining and longings sighed themselves back inside the cottage of my heart, retiring and simply going home.
And I take a stroll around the block, and I don’t bother to change, I adore wandering around in dresses. I feel embodied in my feminine as I sway in yellow over the sidewalks. The early evening light basks my hair, my shoulders, the length of my dress. A heavy heat holds the sky, and I catch the tempting glance of my neighbor’s pool. The blue currents tantalize and tease out a fantasy of sneaking over the fence and jumping right in.
Another time - I wistfully muse, because I’m soaking in the golden heat and letting the heat instruct my steps to be honeyed and slow.
This is my cherished pace of summer, the one I know from childhood, the one that is available to me whenever I soften into the simple elegance of being alive in my life.
For the past few years, while in the deep nourishing cocoon of my inner winter, I’ve been preparing for inner summer. I’ve been doing the work of unfurling, of letting go of all the effort-ing, of the conditioning to strive, struggle, make-it-happen strategies. To rewire and rewrite my relationship to life, I had to drop into stillness, and in that blanket of a silence that speaks, I reviewed and revised how I was flowing and how I was resisting life.
In the fertile void that is winter, in that sacred womb darkness that nurtures endings that evolve into beginnings, I tend to a seed. The seed is ancient and holds the blueprint of embodied flow — of re-remembering to trust ease, to make the choice that amplifies a rejuvenated connection to presence, peace, play.
I bloom by befriending my body.
I bloom by including all aspects, all inner actors that are me. My heart-space becomes the July sun, illuminating and pulling into an unconditionally warm embrace all wounds, all joys, everything knitted together.
I bloom by saying yes to wearing buttercup yellow and to following the urge to jump into a pool … a day later and to driving out to a quaint swimming pool club I don’t need to sneak into and one that I’ve belonged to since childhood.
It’s Sunday morning and the cluster of trees that hug the pool provide the sermon, like they always do, and two children rule the waters with a spirited game of categories. They play with such ease, spunk, and total engagement.
There’s no questioning, hesitation, doubt. There’s no looking around to see who is listening, no self-consciousness, no over-performing.
There’s bantering and quick-witted retorts, all friendly and with the shared focus to have fun.
Listening to them play so brightly in their pure-hearted innocence, I hear the wise echo of my improv instructor meet me poolside:
“There’s no right or wrong way to solve a problem.”
BOOM.
I received that line like a burst of explosive sunshine. The blaze of that Truth traveled backward in time, pouring healing light onto all the times I bought into someone else’s projection, gave away my power and dimmed my creative shine.
There is no right or wrong way to solve a problem.
It took immediate root in how I approach the improv scene, freeing me from fear of criticism or seeking for the laugh, the applause, and placing me at the edge to entertain infinite timelines, possibilities for the direction of the scene. And also, freeing me from criticizing my other players’ decisions, so I can fully say YES to their choices and wholeheartedly join in the collaborative fun.
There is no right or wrong way to solve a problem.
The words take shape right here as these two children play — freed from the subjective label of rightness and wrongness, they are alive to possibilities, constantly pivoting and attempting new ways to enjoy, enliven and engage with the game.
The brother begins to describe a movie,
“There’s a girl from Africa, and this other girl gets hit by a bus…”
“‘Mean Girls!’” his sister shouts, and I think that this summer sun is healing my inner mean girl, the inner critic that tries to keep me safe from those outer critics by playing it safe, but playing it safe is not playing at all.
Keeping a fretful gaze to gauge the audience’s approving or disapproving mood diminishes our creative power and squanders away our precious life-force energy, and the part of me that still does this, I see her and I circle her in with compassion, too.
She’s just trying to keep me safe.
I tell her, there’s no right or wrong way to solve a problem.
And she becomes peaceful and sits beside me while I read and sunbathe and listen and muse with the ongoing preaching of the summer swaying trees.
Today, I follow the nudge to be by water, to become water, to flow, and wearing that yellow dress, a royal bow to the golden sun, to the luminosity that is July and that is the dawning of the soon-to-be Leo season, enhances and encourages the embodiment of that flow.
Every time we say YES to ourselves, even if it’s seemingly mundane and subtle, like choosing a particular outfit or pausing by water, we strengthen self-trust and soften into the aliveness of life, that is our life, that is who we are.
We are life.
We can live in ease-brightened exuberance, like the children playing at the pool. And in fact, I believe this is how we are meant to live.
We can remember there is no right or wrong way to solve a problem when we are artfully creating our days, curating our moments, living in the layers of wonders of our breath-guided journeys.
We can cultivate that ease in our nervous systems so we can bask, revel in simple joys which are the truest joys of living a fully expressed and fully embodied life.
There is nothing to do, nothing to prove, nothing to fix.
The flow is in being alive, and it can be as simple as stepping into the sunlit stream of energy that is us, that is our life.
Today, we can wear that bright yellow by activating that inner luminosity, that inner radiance that is unencumbered aliveness embodied.
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Body Writes: Flow With Summer Ease & Shine Out Creative Luminosity
We’ll be playing into this energy, activating our inner sun and musing with our creativity in the upcoming session of Body Writes. By deciding to teach embodying creative flow through improv philosophy, I’ve become the student and will be sharing embodiment and creative writing exercises that are igniting and nourishing supportive life-flow for me!
Heart-Humming YES! Kindly Register HERE.
When? This Saturday, August 6th 10am-12:15pm EST
Where? Zoom
What? A movement, meditation and writing workshop. To play with the sun-lit days of summer, we’ll be exploring improv philosophy. We’ll practice saying yes to ourselves so we can soften into the flow of life, the flow of the scene and gifting ourselves unconditional support as we express our natural creative luminosity.
How much? $122, and some of the proceeds benefit The Children’s Advocacy Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Read about their work here: https://kykids.org