This is my final blog post for my Desert Adventures.  Here is the promised photo of me, a ‘Certified Massage Therapist intending to be Licensed’ (we practiced announcing this in our final class time together in the room with the green carpet and the anatomy charts curling on the wall) I was surprised on this…  Continue Reading →

I have let this wait far too long.  So, readers, I must bounce about a bit.  In one hour, I will drive the Senator Highway to Goldwater Lake to receive the evidence that I am a certified massage therapist.  This will take place at a picnic and will be much photographed by Allen and I…  Continue Reading →

This is the work of what I am currently learning in school.  I might more accurately say this is what I am currently learning in life, which is nothing new.  It happens to also be a quotation from the Psalms and the words my biodynamic cranial sacral therapy teacher said in class yesterday. Being still…  Continue Reading →

I am sitting on our sofa in the midst of backpacks, changes of clothes, sleeping bags, thermarests.  Allen is an elegant packer.  He has plotted out a menu of that includes eggs, bacon, chicken with peppers, dried mango with figs.  We are going to feast on this after our backpacking hike to the basin of…  Continue Reading →

This holy week I am pondering a new understanding of witness.  We have been studying Ayurvedic practice and massage all week.  It is a messy business.  Lots of oil (specifically sesame oil) and cooking it with rose petals and indian powders with medicinal qualities.  In ayurvedic tradition, all food is medicine.  Meat is eaten, but…  Continue Reading →

The above picture is a tease of blogs to come.  It is the first photo we took in Utah over Spring Break.  I need a few days to let the rock dust settle a bit before I can figure out how to raise the experience to words and get it from head to hands. In…  Continue Reading →

This morning we woke to rain and then watched snow waft from the heavens in big full fluffy flakes.  It was the occasion for laundering bed linens and reading the New York Times (paper version) and considering going to Trinity Presbyterian Church in Prescott (until seeing it was a Requiem and we were in too…  Continue Reading →

I set high aspirations each weekend to update this blog.  I find that weekends take on a life of their own, rather like novelists report about their characters.  The writer may introduce the character and imagine their inception, but at some point the writer can only sit back and watch what happens.  So it is…  Continue Reading →

Recently my teacher for Swedish massage read a poem in class that presented a distinction between learning that comes ‘from without’ and learning that comes ‘from within’. The learning from without was described as purposeful for climbing ladders and making marks on tablets and climbing above others. Wisdom and memory represented the learning that comes…  Continue Reading →