integrating

I am aware of many blessings: I am practicing a blend of shiatsu and Thai massage in my beautiful home studio in Santa Cruz, I am studying the human body from a Western perspective in Biology and Health Science classes, and I am preparing for graduate school in Public Health.

It feels like the wildly divergent aspects of my life are coming together. Things that always made sense to me as part of a balance life manifested themselves in disjointed workweeks: a couple of days each in massage therapy, low-income public education, and farmers' markets. Now I get to research and write about how large-scale cultural trends in diet, behavior, and the spread of ideas manifest themselves along a spectrum of health and dis-ease among populations. In that time I will keep practicing bodywork, and then have the privilege of sharing the information that my education has given me: living it with a lifelong self-care practice, and spreading it via education and written works about how to live our best possible life. It's all coming together!

I will move from speaking from what has worked in my own life and experience to a position of what has worked to promote health in bigger groups. I am aware of what a shift like that might mean: that for a minute there I may begin to say, "now EVERYONE needs to do this or that." I am also trusting that the amount of time I spend checking in with my intuition and my body to make the right choices in my life (see what do you want?, make a joyful noise, and pretty much anything else I wrote in 2008) is going to pay off in being able to move through that phase into one that says, "statistically, a community should be doing X, and how can you see if that is a good choice for you personally?" I will constantly approach new bridges and find new options for synergy in my own life and philosophy, as well as opportunities to try on divergent mindsets for different occasions until I see how and when to employ one or the other.

Integration. Education, purpose, renewal. These are the words that are coming in to my mind as I sink in to Fall, and continue on my path.