Teaching Kundalini - Thank you Universe!
/Yogi Bhajan said, "I have come to create teachers, not to gather students." Okay, I remember thinking when I started teacher training, good for you - but no thanks.
Read MoreAmmaji = Immersed in a bath of chocolate warmth
/I have never taken a bath in melted chocolate, but I imagine that it is similar sensory experience to being in Ammaji’s presence. A warm soft bath of delicious love, saturating every pore of one’s being. Warm chocolate oozing between ones toes, warm against ones knees, I would dip my head down and take a lick of my arm. The smell! Could you imagine the smell of being enveloped in warm chocolate!!
Read MoreSound Blows my Mind
/Learning about sound during my Kundalini Yoga training blew my mind.
Therefore, without any further ado.
String theory tells us the Universe is comprised of vibrating filaments that make up the blocks that make up atoms (as far as I grok the scene). The building blocks of our entire existence/Universe/World is sound. In the beginning was the Word...
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Kundalini Yoga and Yoga
/So, this discussion will cover three main topics. First ~ yoga: its purpose and benefits. Second ~ what is Kundalini Yoga and the Kundalini Energy. Finally, how does Kundalini Yoga compare to other types of yoga.
Read MoreConscious Discipline rocks my world
/Parenthood: the last bastion of amateurism. Thank you Grandfather for the pithy and succinct nugget.
Not one that I totally understood until I crossed the threshold into parenthood myself.
Read MoreArrogance of Intelligence: Goodbye Rousseau
/Intellectual. Smart. Quick. Well-Read. Astute. Sharp. Intellectual acumen creates arrogance. Egoism. Separation from the other person. Impatience. Cruelty. And ... generally is not a very nice internal monologue.
This leads me why I am so thrilled to have cleared out the books ~ donated today to the local library.
Read MoreTeacher Toddler Bean
/Lessons from the life and doings of the Bean.
Watching another human grok language is beyond crazy cool. "Momma here!" "Chasing!" "Bus song." Every day she learns a new word (as every day I forget one... "Could you pass me the water, no juice, argh! Wine!")
Teacher Bean
/I have been meaning for MONTHS to have a list of learnings based on the age of the Bean. Procrastinating has just meant that I need to come up with more learnings. So here goes.
Read MoreLiving in the Question
/Recently the Universe/my belly told me loudly I am to take at least a year off to mourn and rebuild. No outside responsibilities, no extra agendas other than family and land doings. Time to nurture and nest.
Read MoreVictory Bus Project/Prison Industrial Complex/What you can do
/What is obvious to one person is totally not obvious to someone else. I think that is what is implied when people say that common sense is not so common. So this to me is common sense. Our country has a prison-industrial complex and this is a terrible thing.
Read MoreLife with the Bean
/Yes, there are bunch of really great mommy blogs out there (reminds me of the word Femivore, ie not sure I like it). This is not going to become a Mommy Blog. Yet, it might be nice to have those of you who have been with me on this crazy health road to share in my miracle doings. It is also nice to realize modern medicine does both Bone Marrow Transplants and freezes petri dish embryos so that they can become people 8 years later.
Read MoreLessons from the land of surrogacy (part 2 of 2)
/“I had a dream that I am supposed to carry your baby. I want to be your surrogate.”
“No you don’t. You are crazy.”
Katie and I have that kind of friendship. Eight years ago we were thrown together in a unfamiliar Midwest town for our husbands’ surgical residency training - and we created our own family.
What started out as regular Sunday dinners and movie nights morphed into Katie driving me home from medical procedures. Her two-year-old son would jump on the trampoline at summer BBQs - the trampoline I had purchased to detoxify my lymphatic system.
A few years, three frozen embryos, and several biopsy scars later that same son turned to me one Super Bowl Party, “Corinna, put your hair back on, you look better with it on.”
His father, mortified, turns to me, “He didn’t mean that, he doesn’t understand.”
“No, it is a good point, I am a bit of a egghead - especially without any eyebrows.”
My husband’s birthday one year happened to occur when I was still in quarantine on the Bone Marrow Transplant Floor. Katie and her family were the only friends we invited.
We finished our residency. Katie and her family returned to the West Coast and we returned East. A new biopsy scar in my armpit joined the ones on my neck and I said goodbye to my hair again. I also said goodbye to waddling and complaining of swollen ankles, to cute shirts over leggings, to resting a glass of carrot juice on my belly and watching it dance with hiccups. Goodbye to being kicked from the inside. Goodbye to George kissing my belly with paternal pride. We read pamphlets filled with pictures of the Gerber baby and saved money for a surrogate.
In February, just when we are ready to sign a surrogacy contract, Katie called me. I was not able to talk her out of her extraordinary offer.
Later that year, the doctor placed one embryo we had frozen 6 years ago into Katie’s uterus. She gave herself daily shots, made appointments for acupuncture because she knew I wanted it, stopped exercising, educated her children about momma cells and pappa cells coming together, and prayed with her priest.
The day we came home from the implantation at the clinic Katie’s 5-year-old daughter ran up to her momma laying on the couch, leaned over, and kissed Katie’s belly, “Grow baby grow. Grow baby grow.”
During our husband’s training, our friendship became familial. We are adding complexity and depth to that familial relationship by literally adding another member to our family.
Our baby is due in April. Katie, mine, my husband, her husband, and her children - all of us are having this baby. Grow Baby Grow.
(this is the first one in this short lived series - some things are better to be kept close to the chest)
