Seasonal Changes Bring Great Opportunities to Move Out of Old Patterns and Into the Now

Warm inside my Mission flat while the trees thrash in the downpour on Harrison Street and the night sky fills up with lightening. Autumn is here with her cooling temperatures, fish scale clouds, brilliant sunsets, and showers interspersed with crisp, sunny mornings that get me back on my bike for a visit to the Alemany farmer's market before the next deluge. In Petaluma yesterday the streets were plastered with wet orange leaves the size of a large man's hand, and just now the rumble of thunder sets off a series of car alarms. My new life in the city is an orchestra tuning up, a lively ruckus of constant activity, the smokers on my front stoop, the boomboxes driving by, an alarming quantity of concrete, the constant clamor of humanity. Just five months ago my evening soundtrack was comprised of frogs, crickets and the yipping of coyote pups.

The insistent rain seems to call upon me to flow like water and adapt, adapt, adapt, surrendering all that prevents adaptation. So in response, I dropped a limiting story and took a part-time environmental job to supplement my income while writing my thesis and developing my holistic health practice and a start-up specialty food business. I certainly have a lot of balls in the air, but the attitude I am cultivating is creative and brave; I am passionately playing this game of life: enjoying the rain with the sunshine, the polarity of a hot bath after a long wet day of chilled to the bone.

On Wednesday half-way through a yoga class I realized in all the serious hard work of it I wasn't having any fun and deserved some. The next day and the day after I switched my routine to a gentle home-based stretching practice, rolling around on the pilates ball and some fantastic bike rides thanks to a work-trade client who did some much-needed bicycle maintenance for me. It is a relief to be free of my own inner prison guard, who was shoving me around from one cell after another in the name of my own liberation. Even a yoga practice can be counter-productive if we can't hold it lightly enough. So I am practicing being gently responsive to the signals of my emotional and physical tides. Adjusting diet, pace, approach to fitness, ideas for how I should be earning my keep, and so on, to suit the actual needs of the present moment. And what a relief it is!

I am discovering optimal rhythms for meal times and fantastic new combinations of super, fresh, whole foods. Discerning what teachings I give to all of my clients that could be wrapped into a class or workshop. And watching my clients thrive. As always, transformation is available each and every day.

What do you have to shift, like the weather, to find yourself on your purpose and enjoying every moment?

An Open Letter to the President Who Keeps Emailing Me

Dear President Obama,

I do not understand why you keep asking for money to support your work. You are getting paid for a full time job, I am not. I am one you are trying to get behind. But I cannot support this work with money I don't have. What's with that? I write letters and make phone calls and sign petitions and stand behind my prayers and what I value, behind the truth.

Here's what I am working on. I am completing my M.S. in holistic nutrition and strive to help people get and stay healthy and stay out of the hospitals and rip-off health care system that causes so many more problems than it helps. I am uninsured. I rely on wonderful "alternative" and holistic medical professionals for my health care. They work with me on the finances. We do trades. We collaborate and support each other as people. The health care system is a nightmare, and I don't believe that forcing the American population to purchase insurance with dollars they don't have for medical care that doesn't get the big picture is the answer.

I know you are doing your level best to find compromise to overhaul healthcare. I don't know how to do your job. It's a tough one. But I don't know that I would want to buy my way into a crumbling system if I had the cash flow to do so.

I see the future from the present and I am focused on collaborations, community building, buying local and voting with our spending dollars for clean, whole food and well-made products crafted with love and attention, kindness and compassion, practicing consensus and striving for a modest and sustainable lifestyle. Taking care of one another. Supporting the beautiful land we call our home, whether or not we "own" it. Being responsible.

Please do not send me anymore solicitations for money. You are barking up the wrong tree. Throwing your pebble in the wrong pool. Me, I'm just moving forward doing what feels right to take care of myself, my family, and this holy circle of life.

Sending blessings of love and gratitude all around the circle, right to you and yours.

In peace, Maxime Zahra Stadlen