People Who Eat in Coffee Shops

People who eat in coffee shops
are not worried about nutrition.
They order the toasted cheese sandwiches blithely,
followed by chocolate egg creams and plaster of paris
wedges of lemon meringue pie.
They don’t have parental, dental, or medical figures hovering
full of warnings, or whip out dental floss immediately.
They can live in furnished rooms and whenever they want
go out and eat glazed donuts along with innumerable coffees,
dousing their cigarettes in sloppy saucers.

Edward Field

CultFit Free


The Problem of Describing Trees

For a Dear Friend

The aspen glitters in the wind
And that delights us.

The leaf flutters, turning,
Because that motion in the heat of August
Protects its cells from drying out. Likewise the leaf
Of the cottonwood.

The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem
And the tree danced. No.
The tree capitalized.
No. There are limits to saying,
In language, what the tree did.

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Dance with me, dancer. Oh, I will.

Mountains, sky,
The aspen doing something in the wind.

Robert Haas

CultFit Apsen Heart


Golden Light

Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear-

Shrouded in our arrogance, we often believe time is never-ending. When in fact, the end of time, or at least this time, this moment as we are experiencing it Is the one thing in our lives of which we can be absolutely certain of. If I may ask you this morning, why then, do we insist on spending these precious moments consumed with how many followers we have on WordPress, or perusing the trending topics on Reddit, rather than being fully engaged in this amazing  moment in our lives?

This morning I woke up earlier than I normally do. I found myself paying more attention to “something” else. Rather than being fully engaged in the fleeting moments lying before me Moments that, for their own reasons, are even more precious than most I had my face buried in the screen on my iThingy, lighting up a still dark room. A none too subtle reflection of my enamored face switching between the weather app and the fantasy baseball app, reminded me of unwavering attention to my virtual world, and my increasingly wavering attention to my true self. This moment prompted me to pause, set down my gadget, thinking about just how much distraction we volunteer for in our daily lives, and how much these distractions impact what we have come to consider meaningful in our lives (my fantasy team stinks this season).

Daily Meditation:

Figuring out and deciding what to fill each moment during the day with, is truly, the most challenge part living a life, in the moment.

CultFit Moment

 


A Lonely Quest

Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity-

*I wrote this post during a brief stop, riding a century one scoring hot weekend last summer in Nebraska. I’m not sure why I didn’t publish it at the time, maybe I was on to something, or maybe not. It’s safe to say that I walk a path in this beautiful world differently than most, and this philosophy carries over into how I help folks to compete, not on the road – but rather in this thing called life*

I am fortunate and humbled by the amazing people I get to talk with each day. The most captivating, and certainly the most personal moments occur when we struggle to “spit it out“, to put into words the thoughts that lie at the very edge of our ability to put them forth as meaningful words, a dense conversation full of wonder and meaning. Each of us has experienced the feeling of straining, against the very limit(s) of putting our thoughts into words, or even these well intended thoughts into actions.

I’m here, with this tiny little blog-o-thing, to help you break through … Unfortunately, no one is listening. The Hedonic Treadmill keeps chugging along.

Opening people’s eyes to the real benefits of yoga and training athletes is more than just enhancing their ability in a tangible way (inflated numbers – fleeting results), but rather – developing deeper thinking, a curious mind and wondering too. This really bothers me, deeply. You know what? It flat-out pisses me off … If you can’t think what you can’t say? Don’t put your thoughts into action – with only half your heart.  I’m comfortable saying for the first time on this platform, that I am gently leading you on a journey for more words, deeper thought and wondering, exploring different ways to say, see and doing “things“.

Many of us are comfortably corralled within the limits of our power of thought, speech and outward actions. We don’t think anything we can’t say and we can’t say much. The truth of the matter, we don’t even come close to doing the things we can do, and we certainly don’t do much. More often than naught, a closed mind isn’t stubborn, just stunted in its ability to grow, in hibernation so to speak. I feel the same way in-regards to how we live in this byzantine world we called home now-a-days.

Daily Meditation:

To get by in the ultra competitive world we live in, all we need is a few things to think and say, a few things to do, and a few ways to stop our thoughts from running beyond what we’ve already thought.

I feel my work here is done, be well and do take care.

CultFit Luck


Sharing (oneself)

Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else … Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it-

One of the most powerful ways we can cultivate self-love to is to give ourselves the subtle gift of time. The message we send when we are fully present, mind, body, and spirit, is that we care, enough, to make ourselves the number-one priority in our lives.

Let’s think about this for a moment – I’m not talking about being selfish, nor am I talking about updating our FaceTube status moments before attending a ninety minute power yoga class.

Unfortunately, our lives can get pretty hectic and crazy, crazy enough to the point that there seems to be little down time where we, can really connect with ourselves. We live in a world that makes us believe that time tuning out – FaceTube, Social – Whatever, is indeed time well spent. You can probably guess I don’t believe it is.

Instead of writing bloviated Yelp! reviews, how about we set aside “self-time” in which we devote time to ourselves?!? Sounds insane huh?!? Personal example: Beginning last year, I decided to commit every day after work to time with the family. No TV programming, that’s all TV does anyways, program our minds into becoming vast wastelands. We disconnect from technology, and connect to simply being. The specific activity is rather trivial, it’s the time we spend together It’s the time I spendunconnected that matters.

Daily Meditation:

I’ve found that more times than not, removing an activity that is sending unhealthy messages about our true selves, is indeed the purest expression of love.

CultFit Share