Hammock Enlightenment: A Mother’s Call to Action

The wise yogi knows “the inaction that is in action, and the action that is in inaction.”

from the Bhagavad Gita

So much has happened this year already.  Wars, retribution, elections, revolutions in the Middle East, earthquakes and tsunamis. Our world is turbulent right now.   The time has come, as poet and activist Joanna Macy writes, for the Great Turning.  We have a choice to move from a world centered solely around conventional economics – what author David Korten calls the Age of Empire – towards an Earth Community, a world where the values of community, sustainability and love inform our lives in a powerful way.

As I was bringing in a new baby into our world earlier this year, I couldn’t help but think that it is both a challenging as well as an imperative time to bring new, conscious souls into our universe.  After all, we need some help don’t we, to move towards that Earth Community? I also felt strongly that in order to withstand the ebb and flow of our life in these challenging times, I had to turn toward a meditation practice, to find strength and peace.

Yogi, Blissologist, surfer and all around renaissance man, Eoin Finn, who, full disclosure here, also happens to be my husband, believes that you can find inner peace in a hammock. He calls it hammock enlightenment and says he discovered it while on one of our Yoga, Ecology + Surf retreats in Costa Rica, where he came closest to what he has sought for many years in his meditation practice.

Eoin recently gave a Ted Talk on why getting into a hammock can change our world.

“By slowing down, we become kinder, more compassionate beings” he says. “We start to pay attention to our relationships be they with our yoga practice, our intimate family, the food we eat, our communities and our environment.”

Don’t worry, I’m not just talking about an afternoon siesta, it’s about so much more.

Hammock enlightenment is about being outside and experiencing the spirituality in nature, in becoming present to life as it unfolds.  And yes, you can find it right in your own backyard or under a leafy tree on your city block, you don’t have to retreat to a forest, though sometimes that can help.

Says Eoin, “Hammock enlightenment is a pathway towards sustainability.  We cannot protect our planet unless we truly feel what is sacred in it.  We need to feel connected to something in order to want to safeguard it.  We have to love something in order to fight for it.”

Mother’s Day is approaching.   This year will be my first year to experience it on the other side.  As I write this, I feel connected to my own mother, our lineage of mothers, and to our universal mother, the Earth.  It is time, now more than ever to shower our Earth with that sacred love and connection she has so long cocooned us with.  As James Cameron showed us in Avatar, the consequences of ignoring the heart of our planet are terrible.  And as art mirrors life which mirrors art, we see aspects of this throughout our world.  The planet is heating up, something’s brewing.  We have to act now.

And sometimes action can mean the opposite of what you think, it can mean slowing down, so we can reset and begin to honestly evaluate our actions and create change.

Here’s Eoin’s talk.  Listen and let me know if it inspires you.

• Do you think slowing down is an antidote to our modern way of life?
• Do you think slowing down will allow us to become more present, more kind and more connected to our communities and to our planet?
• Do you think slowing down will allow us to change course?

Thank you for subscribing to this blog.  I am going to do my utmost to sneak away during my baby’s naptime and post at least once and hopefully more each week!

namaste,

Insiya.