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Becoming Fully Alive
(While You Can)
Using Your Forthcoming Death to Wake Yourself Up
An enlivening new workshop with Sherle Stevens and Anne Browning
Beautiful, delicious food to delight your senses; exercises to enhance your senses; visualizations to awaken your gifts; music to deepen awareness.
May 16th & 17th
The workshop will be held at a beautiful home in the Dallas, Texas area.
Cost is $250 -- You are worth the extravagance!
Call Sherle Stevens at 214-403-4583 to register for this exciting workshop. | |
A Note from Anne ...
Happy Spring
Nothing is more affirming to life than the season of spring. Signs of new growth are pushing through ground newly awakened. Trees are beginning to turn their branches towards a sun whose warmth grows stronger as the days grow longer. People come out of dark interiors and help the earth as she begins to give birth once again. It is the start of spring!
Imagine for a moment if the trees once stripped of leaves gave up and refused to grow again, or the crocus stayed wrapped in its paper cover deep in the ground. What if individuals refused to acknowledge the coming of the season and stayed indoors close to the fire? Ridiculous. Who would choose the dark death of winter and ignore the rich prompting of spring? I am going to suggest there are thousands and thousands of human beings that choose the cold and dark over the warmth and light. In addition, they do it without thinking.
Becoming Fully Alive tells us that winter will eventually come but it's not here now! Now is the time to live, to grow, to be in the light and the warmth. When we stay in places of darkness, anger, resentment, apathy, we are choosing an early death, a death of the spirit. What in your life is dead? What could become alive? What needs to become alive?
A very dear friend of mine died of brain cancer almost two years ago. I came to visit her two days before she passed. Her body was dying and her unquestionable spirit was still growing! She had questions for me regarding my perceptions of the beings that she was witnessing as she prepared to cross the threshold from this realm to the next. She was listening to music she loved and was humming to some of it. She was concerned about her husband and was giving me directions on how to cope with my loss. She was fully alive.
What needs to push through in your life right now? What wants to turn toward the light that is always here and grow new buds? What wants to Become Fully Alive?
Happy Spring!
Anne
A Note from Sherle ...
My Earliest Memory of Feeling Fully Alive
I can trace back in time to an event so momentous to my 5 year old self that I'm sure it has given me my passions for travel, for surprises, and for the mystery of the night.
During World War II, when my father was out of town on business, my mother decided to take me to Chicago to visit her sister and her husband, who was on leave from the Air Force.
Of course, knowing I'd never be able to get to sleep from the excitement if I knew about the upcoming journey, my mother said nothing about it to me when she tucked me in bed. But several hours later - in the middle of the night - she awakened me and dressed me and told me about our adventure. By the time I was bundled up in my snowsuit, a taxicab arrived to take us to the train station.
Of all the moments in this exhilarating experience, none was as wondrous to me as the taxi ride. How extraordinary to be awake and dressed and riding along a winding boulevard, where the street lights made the snow glisten and the wet streets shimmer... in the middle of the night! Why, there wasn't a sound but the hum of the taxi's motor... and not a soul was stirring. It was as thrilling to me as the thought of Santa and the raindeer whistling through the sky.
When we arrived at the station, there was the gleaming Express train, just like in my picture books. I could hardly believe how big it was. Inside, it was very warm... and I must have fallen asleep. For the next thing I remember, we were getting off the train... and I saw there in the station so many soldiers and sailors - hundreds of them - home on leave for Christmas. My uncle in his handsome uniform and my pretty aunt were there to greet us. For them and my mother, the trip was just beginning. For me, the most precious part that has remained in my heart's memory, is that magical taxicab ride through the night.
Warmly,
Sherle | |
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| OUTRAGEOUS
Create a memory party. Invite family and friends to come dressed as their favorite age (not counting now). Ask them to bring their favorite food, favorite drink, favorite music and ten trivia questions about that time period. Have each guest write out what was best about being that age. Was it what they did, who they knew, how they looked or who loved them? They will put this answer (or answers) in a box. The host will draw out these answers periodically and challenge the group to see who knows the writer. (Ex. Who loved being twenty one because she could dance until 4:00 a.m. and still go to work?) For each right answer have a small prize. Do the same with the trivia that guests brought.
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OUT OF THE BOX
This month we challenge you to come to our workshop in May. Register early as there is only room for twenty. It will be extravagant, exuberant and exhilarating!
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OUT OF BREATH 
I have started Cellercising! I purchased a small trampoline /rebounder of the very highest quality. They tell me I only need to do 10-20 minutes on it once a day to dramatically change my health for the better. I will let you know.
Right now, I am having so much fun bouncing! |
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QUESTIONS
Sharon writes,
"How do you feel fully alive when you are in pain?"
Dear Sharon,
This is tough. When I am in pain I want to curl up, stay in bed and turn off the phone. Physical pain can limit what we are able to do during any given day and emotional pain can keep us from enjoying the days that have been given to us.
What I know, from experience, works is to enlist help and be of help. Get your friends to visit you, bring you what you need, call you and tell you a joke or share a funny movie. Be of help to someone else. This always helps me. A call, a donation, a card all can help someone who has not even heard of Becoming Fully Alive. Send them our newsletter!
Even in pain our senses are able to respond. Choose a day to explore one of your senses and wake up to the joy that awaits you. Read "Annam Cara" aloud.
Hope that helps a little. You are in our prayers.
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