Happy New Year?

It's New Year's Eve and all my Facebook friends seem to be posting "Happy New Year" messages. I don't really "celebrate" the New Year: I'll be going to bed just as usual tonight, and when that happens will depend more on how redecorating the sitting room is going than on whether it's before or after midnight. However, the year end can provide a convenient point from which to reflect on the past and look forwards to the future.

I've just returned from over three weeks in the USA, amongst other things attending a beautiful five night silent retreat with Adyashanti, and staying with the very friendly community at OneTaste. It's been a rich time for me, and I've already scheduled my next trip for a couple of weeks around Easter. I'm finding myself simultaneously reflecting on and trying to gain more mileage from various learnings and enjoying a newfound sense of what one might call "the eternal now."

2009 may be the end of the decade, but for me it also seems like a year which has marked the end of a personal era. I've been doing many new things--new ways of being in the world (at the start of this decade I had never experienced complementary therapies, no mind started to practise myself ... nor had I started to explore spirituality)--and this year I've lost a much loved "heart friend" in the death of my German Shorthaired Pointer, Oscar.

2010 brings many new adventures: the first group classes and weekend workshops of my Chi Kung teaching, which I'm really excited about ... the start of three new professional trainings in disciplines I've had in the back of my mind to study for some time ... and a determination to both stop participating in various things which don't really serve me (the amount of time I spend on Facebook, for example!) and start to open up new areas in my personal life.

Most of all, however, I look forward to continuing to welcoming life, and encouraging my clients to do the same. It may be an over-used cliche to say that life is the path and not the destination, but it's very true. Both biodynamic massage and Chi Kung are powerful ways of emphasising the simple enjoyment of being present to what is ... every moment is fresh and new; you don't have to wait for another year to pass in order to celebrate this simple truth!