Vote Now: Monday Mystic

Just finished my sacral releases, in my nightgown, of course, 'cuz it's President's Day.

Need your help with a little something: there are so many mystics to choose from today, I'm having difficulty choosing just one to blog about. Please vote in the comments section for one or more. We got farmers, professors, moms and entrepreneurs in the mix.

• Novella Carpenter, local Oakland author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. She had me at her first line: "I have a farm on a dead-end street in the ghetto."

• Regena Thomashauer, aka Mama Gena, Creatrix of the Mama Gena School of Womanly Arts

• Rebecca Burgess, my low-impact eco-artist friend and activist. 

• Marta Dansie, gifted designer and blogger

• Marie Forleo of Rich, Happy & Hot

• More Danielle Laporte, because you know self-realization rocks, and you know I can't get enough of her brilliance.

• Brene Brown, PhD, a refreshing professor from Texas who is an expert in vulnerability and authenticity.

• Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an oldie but goodie.

Vote on which one for my next Mystic Monday blog! Or suggest others! Particularly momtreneurs! And I'll get right on it! Thanks so very much. xoxox

Prayer for Overwhelm

I want to shred the rad, but I'm a bit weary today. Need a little intervention, a dose of burn-out prevention. Not sure what flavor. Please renew my spirit and particularly my good humor. When I feel frustrated and like a victim/martyr: fill me with hope, the present moment and get me out of the blame game, the pain body. My mind goes there so easily, as Annie Lamont says - "My mind is a bad neighborhood I try not to go into alone."

When I feel like I have no more juice to give, remind me that the juice flows from You.

When I get confused and feel my juiciness is finite, teach me that You provide an infinite well of inspiration.

When I feel lazy, teach me that there is much work to be done and many folks need my assistance.

When I lose faith or fall off the path, damn - again, remind me that I am filled with enormous talent and genius.

When I forget what I am doing and why, help me recover the pleasure, the discipline of pleasure, and the deep satisfaction of my path.

When I lose my faith, show me the way back home, back to You. With humor and pleasure, as that makes it all good.

Inspired and paraphrased from Naomi Levy, A Prayer for Overcoming Burnout. Share a prayer with me in the comment section!

What I Do: Organic Gynecology & Bioidentical Hormones

Often I get asked what I actually do with clients and in workshops and coming next month in WEBINARS! Here it is, inspired by Danielle Laporte's Burning Questions, and squeezed between seeing patients today and picking up the kids from school. Enjoy! Join the Love Train!

Organically Fit: Togs for The Dailey Method & Yoga

I was imagining the rolled eyes at The Dailey Method, which is the exercise I favor and find better than working out with a trainer. But if you aren't sporting the latest Lululemon during your workout, you're a bit of a freak.

Whatever. I think they know by now I'm a bit of a freak.

On the other hand, I knew my yoga posse wouldn't mind me busting out my yoga moves in organic cotton. They're used to that. Seekers, self-experimenters, searching for meaning and a good organic yoga pant.

So what to wear. For a whole year. Got the jeans, got the organic cotton thongs. But technical gear for my time-starved exercise routine?

There's the old reliable Blue Canoe. Yawn. Sorry, but while it feels good, the design looks remarkably similar to 7 years ago when I bought it while breastfeeding. Fortunately I did find one top worth mentioning (and, if you are a beloved patient of mine, you're seeing it on me at least once/week): Athena.

Fortunately when a girl runs low on options and lives in Oakland, we can hop the bridge to San Francisco. Clary Sage Organics on Fillmore? That's more like it. Here's a top I like. Their togs are designed by owner Patti Cazzato and constructed in Richmond and SF. Even better, they are made from organic cotton here in California. And the design is so good: hip yet a little vintage. Stretch where you need it. Vintage Swim Girdle, anyone?

Covered up with a little Mist Henley organic magic? See you in class - I'm the one with the mis-matched organic socks that do not have "The Dailey Method" patterned along the bottom.

Mystic Danielle Laporte: There's a Bigger Story to Your Story

I'm madly, crazy, over-the-moon in love with a new mystic named Danielle Laporte. She is rocking my integrative, hormone-infused world and getting me totally reconnected to integrative medicine, and how to firestart the health of others on a larger scale.  That's her line in the title: There's a bigger story to your story. Danielle has a tremendous gift to see the Big Story and reflects it back to you.

Here's an inside line: Light your own fire right here with her $150 Fire Starter Session (FSS). Prepare to be transformed. Danielle's is an evocative path, treading new territory in the online experience of deep authenticity.

Here is a sweet little sample of what Danielle calls The Burning Questions. You get these also if you book Danielle for a $1000, one-hour 1:1 session (BTW, you can do that too, and deduct the $150 from the FSS).

WARM HEART : BLAZING PATH

1. When someone at a party asks you what you do, what do you say?  (And how do you feel when you say it?) 

2. How do you make your money? What are your revenue streams? What makes you the most money?

2.5. How much money would you LIKE to be making? 

3. What do people thank you for most often? What do they come to you
for, or say about you most frequently ("positive" or "negative")?

4. When do you feel powerful, passionate, free, incredibly useful, excited, inspired? 

5. What do you think your form of genius is? What are you amazing at (work or life-related?)

Let me know your answers and I'll show you mine!

Organic GYN Goes to Portland for Baby Shower

Been to an organic baby shower? Me neither!

I'm in Portland, helping to throw a baby shower for my beloved sister, Anna. That would be her diaper cake, made by a friend, above.

I've taken my organic show on the road twice now: first to Point Reyes at New Years, and then to Tahoe over MLK weekend. It's rather easy to wear, eat & schmear organic in Point Reyes but Tahoe is another story. Jury is still out on how easily organic I can be in Portland but I'm hopeful.

Anna is pregnant with her first baby, so my other beloved sister, Justina, together with our mom are throwing Anna the shower. Mom has done the heavy lifting of planning and purchasing all the food.

I brought Anna an organic wool sleeper for her baby (in the color "natural." naturally). When i presented my small gift, she gave me a grin and thanked me. She's trying to go along and be a sport, about my latest experiment but really it must feel a bit irritating.

Most of the food we're serving which is heavy on the Ina Garten crowd-pleasers such as Arugula salad with roasted potatoes, tomatoes and green beans and from-scratch herbed crisped crackers plus mini cupcakes from Saint Cupcake in Northwest Portland - not organic. Savignon Blanc and mimosas made from Proseco from Trader Joe's - not organic. Carrots for the crudite platter are organic! I'll be eating those with Yogi Tea.

"Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We'd be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together."  - Pema Chodron

Anna bought a cute little maternity dress from Nordstrom. I'll be wearing my usual organic uniform: organic cotton jeans, organic wool socks, organic cotton thong from Etsy, organic cotton Athena top from Blue Canoe (I actually adore this top - rather sexy for being organic!), organic wool cardigan in a color that almost matches the Athena top, organic cotton bra from Rawganique. Not so fancy but it's a thrill for me to have my little uniform and not stare with despair for long moments at my closet about what to wear. I only have 3 outfits! Keeps the packing easy!

I'm also sporting an organic tampon; perhaps TMI as my 11-year-old is fond of saying.  But seriously - think about the dioxins in your Tampax right up next to your precious vaginal lining where you have bazillions of blood vessels and vulnerable, important nerves. Your G-spot prefers to be toxin-free!

Anna knows me well and wisely ferried me to my fave organic vegan cafe, Blossoming Lotus, upon arrival, and commanded me to purchase a weekend worth of food because the plan was takeout toxic Chinese for dinner last night. She knows how I feel about MSG. I enjoyed raw pesto portabello pizza while my darling family of origin ate hot and sour soup with white rice and sesame chicken.

Forecast for Portland my entire stay? Rain. That's another gap in my organic wardrobe - along with being poorly equipped to snowboard organically, I also haven't yet sourced any organic rain jackets. Leave me a comment if you've figured this one out!

Overall, this shower is a lesson in letting go, loosening my grip on how I think others should be (WTF! That cupcake is toxic!) and staying on my modest organic path without being too pedantic, self-righteous or smug. Or irritating. Or maybe even insufferable.

"I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us...It was all about letting go of everything." - Pema Chodron

Organic Socks Gone Wrong

I'm one month deep into the Organic Experiment, and have been woefully underreporting my adventures. Apologies. Yet, I'm having many rich moments of bliss, and... well, many shrunken things. While I feel I should be sharing the baseline toxic load data I've collected, I'd like to start with a story about organic socks gone wrong and lessons learned.

That nothing is static or fixed, that all is fleeting and impermanent, is the first mark of existence. It is the ordinary state of affairs. Everything is in process. Everything—every tree, every blade of grass, all the animals, insects, human beings, buildings, the animate and the inanimate—is always changing, moment to moment. -- Pema Chodron

I shed a lot of clothing as I prepared for my year of wearing organic, which continues to delight me endlessly. Found a like-minded soul - Bindu Wiles - who captured the bliss of limited choice in her "Shed Project." Bindu, a white chick from Brooklyn who happens to be a Buddhist had the brilliant idea to pair down her belongings to 100 items only, over 8 weeks last fall, and rather than just wax poetic about her solitary journey, she invited the broader community to join her. Read about her experience right here.

Why does it make me so happy to have shed so many clothes? Do the old, toxic clothes weigh down my soul like negative coping patterns and excess weight? Why am I thrilled to have only 6 pairs of undies, 3 bras, 4 pairs of pants and 6 shirts? Why does the vacuous space in my dresser and closet feel like I'm making room for more important ways of being radically and outrageously present in the world?

It's not all bliss and rapture: my first day of organic on New Year's Day began with a load of wash which included my 5 pair of organic socks. You probably know where this is headed. My darling husband agreed to put the laundry in the dryer, and sheepishly emerged from the laundry room asking about caterpillars.

"Caterpillars?!" I repeated, stunned but slowly realizing that I had blithely washed my precious hand-knit organic socks, made from the kind sheep at local Petaluma sheep farm, Windrush, in hot water.

"I opened the washer and there were these weird 2 inch furry caterpillars staring up at me," reports my sweet husband, David Gottfried, "and they looked curiously like the socks you so happily knit a month ago. Now one finger doesn't fit inside. Sorry, Babe!"

Caterpillars. We all had a good laugh and a reminder about impermance. The Organic Experiment is in process and I'm down a few socks, an expected part of the flow of daily, ordinary life. Weren't those socks just on loan to me?   

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm. -  George Carlin