Practicing

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake

back

As a man in his last breath drops all he is carrying, each breath is a little death that can set us free. – Mark Nepo

The lightness of breath.

I understand breathing is central to life, but it wasn’t until I started practicing yoga and training for long runs that I really understood breathing. One of my favorite teachings in yoga is always come back to your breath. In fact, yoga is all about breath. When your breathing becomes labored in yoga, you learn to get centered and allow yourself to find calm. Similarly during a long run, focusing on your breath can ease your body’s tension and your mind’s noise. Center is found in the breath, and the center is light. The center is not heavy or cumbersome. The center is not hard to manage or frantic. The center is not settled in the past or the future. The center is presence and breath.

It takes courage to begin.

I had a running coach once tell me the hardest part of running is putting on your shoes. The logic follows that once your shoes are on, it is much easier to get out the door and go. There is hope in beginning. There is creativity in beginning. There is vulnerability in beginning. There is strength in beginning. Beginning is not for the weak. Weakness is aligned with fear. Weakness is aligned with shame. If we listen to those that suggest each breath (which the body naturally takes) is a beginning, and I very much believe that to be true on so many levels, then we are built to live in a cycle of perpetual hope, creativity, vulnerability, and strength.

Beginning is as important as follow-through.

People focus on the importance of follow-through (and follow-through is important) but beginnings make a difference, too. If you never begin, you never succeed. If you never begin, you never share whatever idea, invention, creation, or solution you may have with the world. If you never begin, the only certainty is that you will never finish. If you never begin, you never gain the wisdom that is found in doing, If you never begin, the possibility offered in each breath is lost on each exhale.