Author: Kimberly Kingsley

It is a beautiful, cool Saturday – the first real hint of coolness after a long summer. Where I am usually thrilled to have a morning dedicated solely to writing, this morning I found myself longing for adventure. I checked my cell phone a couple times to see if anyone miraculously called to see if I wanted to go for a ride on a Harley or hot air balloon. No luck.

I decided to take my laptop on my patio and write, the closest I could get to adventure. Now I am going to go for a run in the park rather than my traditional Saturday yoga class – whew, I’m really on the edge now!

For me, even the smallest variations in routine can provide much needed freshness into my day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get to ride on a Harley…

I watched “Ray” the other night. The movie portrayed Ray Charles as having a rich and courageous life. He battled Heroin for many, many years. I was particularly moved by a scene of him in rehab when he had a vision (or perhaps a visit) from his mother and little brother who had died years earlier. In the vision they loved him up and released him from guilt he had carried all of his life. I couldn’t help but think that this closure is what gave him the strength to stand on his own two feet without heroin for the rest of his life.

So many of us use addictive behavior to mask our pain – what would happen if we just got rid of the pain?

It took me all of five minutes of talking with my sister (free therapy) to realize that my energy was low – hello! Aren’t I the one who talks incessantly about personal energy management? The interesting part of it all is that I labeled my low energy “discouragement.”

I see this a lot with clients too. It is as if we need to find a cause for why we’re feeling low when sometimes the cause is that we’re low! Funny. I took the morning off yesterday to write and now I feel back to my optimistic, energized self.

My sister-in-law Amy tells of a yoga teacher who once said, “Be where your at…. on the mat.” It didn’t matter that she said the part about “on your mat,” because Amy had already had a profound moment with the “Be where your at” part.

Sometimes it’s difficult to be where your at. Today is one of those days for me. Discouragement is in the air and I’m trying not to breathe it in. Writing is good medicine for me. When I’m done with this entry I will work on my book – trying to remember that passing moods are no excuse to stop expressing oneself.

A little boy close to our family is being treated for neuroblasatoma, a rare form of cancer. He is such a strong, beautiful spirit. The treatment is harsh. Luckily they have a blog where Noah’s grandmother regularly posts how thing are going. It is www.noahnelson.org.

Please send your prayers and loving energy in the direction of Noah and his family. As his grandmother said in her last post, they are all heros.

Yesterday I was teaching at SCC. The students are fresh and open – really awesome. One lively student asked about a relationship that she doesn’t feel is working. She expressed confusion about whether her boyfriend really cares or not.

I drew a communication pie on the board with only 7% verbal and the rest nonverbal, which is one statistic on the subject. I told her that in order to see if he cares, she should get rid of his words and see what’s left. She and another equally lively student simultaneously repeated: “Get rid of the words and see what’s left.” I think they got it.

I never thought that quoting Babyface would be so rewarding! I’ve enjoyed the comments from some of you who felt moved to jump in on this one.

The theme of my website is “Express Yourself” and it seems a few of us are putting ourselves out there – which I love. The truth is, I always teach and write about what I am personally working on, and writing some lyrics from Babyface’s new CD was as much me as anything else.

It came from the “juicy” part of me – my soul, rather than my spirit. One of the things I’m enjoying about being years into my spiritual practice (or maybe it’s just the maturation process…) is what feels like spirit permeating my cells. In this place everything feels spiritual. Duality is giving way to integration. So I’m celebrating whatever helps me express this universal life that moves through us – and at the moment it’s Babyface.

“You be rulin with a certain shade of cool, I don’t know nobody half as fresh as you. I be checkin your behavior, baby you got so much flavor, sometimes I want to call you juicyfruit.”

– Babyface

I am at the point with this blogging stuff where I have run out of eloquent things to say. I guess this is why people say that blogging is different from other writing, because at a point – if your going to write fairly often – you just have to say whatever is on your mind. Whatever is real in the moment you are writing.

Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with a well known writing coach. I plan to talk with him about the book I’m working on and various questions about the publishing world.

In the meantime, I am already starting to think about my next book – so it goes for writers I suppose…

I was very moved when a man riding his bike in the midst of complete destruction from the hurricane made the following comment to a reporter, “Man, I dare not complain about anything…”

I have adopted that mantra for myself every since hearing this man who obviously had nothing say something so laced with gratitude.