My daily yoga and pranayama practice nourishes me like a good hike or a really delicious meal! Through my practice, I came to realize my calling as a weaver of ceremonies. And so I was delighted to find an article about what we do as Celebrants in February’s Yoga Journal.  It is a publication that I’ve been reading for quite a few years and really enjoy.

Highlighted in the article, is my colleague Donna Belk. She is a yoga teacher and Life Cycle Celebrant living in Austin, Texas. She inspires me with her approach to living and dying. I love how she explains:

“When I create a ceremony, I am in a state of relaxed focus. It’s the same as when I teach a yoga class: I am creating a container where people feel safe and can open up to their feelings.”

I completely agree with Donna about how we create a sacred container as Celebrants – whether for ceremonies of new life, love or loss. The article also gives a nice concise background about Celebrancy as a movement:

Founded in Australia 30 years ago and now an emerging trend in the United States, celebrancy offers people, particularly those who are not connected with a religious tradition, meaningful options for observing life’s milestones. Guy Walton, owner of Johnson-Walton Funeral Home in Milford, New Jersey, says, “I direct my clients who have no ties to a church or clergy to a funeral celebrant, because I know their loved one will be memorialized in a significant way.”

Enjoy the article and any other inspiring tidbits you find in Yoga Journal while you are there!

Kristine

Oh, how I would love to compose an adoption ceremony for this new mother!

Take a second to read Betsy Sather’s story – she just became the mother of two year old Haitian twins that survived the earthquake. Amazing. It is one of the most uplifting stories I’ve heard arise out of the devastation. I wish Betsy and her toddlers complete health and joy in their story as a family.

When an individual or family adopts children, it is without doubt a life changing and deeply meaningful turning point for the newly formed family. At Sweetgrass, one of the most joyful services I provide involves helping new families push the ‘pause’ button for a moment in time – to create memorable ceremonies for celebrating adoption and blessing babies. Pausing to savor the love and hope of such a tender moment in a family’s history is a beautiful experience.

Enjoy this uplifiting story!

Kristine

Ceremony as medicine? Really? Yes.

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to hear a presentation by Dr. Anne Marie Chiasson here in Tucson. She spoke with such deep knowing and passion! I loved it. She held the packed room of 90 people totally captivated. The meeting was the first for the newly formed Arizona Integrative Wellness Coalition. (Of which I am becoming a member!)

Her message held many layers. Some ideas stirred my thoughts about ceremonial work quite deeply, plus stoked the fires of my passion for it. For instance- when she said ceremony is a “place where there is no time and we are all connected”. I am often amazed at the sense of transcendence experienced within moving ceremonies. She also spoke of how we each have our own mythology, our own stories. I honor that precise point during my work with clients at Sweetgrass.

Dr. Chiasson so artfully spoke about spontaneity and surprise in ceremonies, too. She spoke of how ceremonies “pop-up in ICU, to hold the things too big to carry alone” and how this is especially true for people crushed by grief. I so wholly agree, that ceremony helps us carry burden because we tap into a collective strength.

You can read the essence of her talk in her article “Ritual in Family Medicine – Ritual, Ceremony and Meaning“. It is in the San Francisco Medical Society June 2009 publication (free PDF), entirely devoted to “Ritual in Medicine”. She even brushes upon literature about brain wave research, showing how experiencing ceremony stimulates brain wave shifts (comparable to sound stimulation).

Yum. Amazingly delicious information. Do yourself a favor and check out Dr. Chiasson’s work and the June 2009 article. Her message is relevant for all of us.

In gratitude,

Kristine

Do you have any songs that positively transport you? For example, when I hear Aspenglow by John Denver, I am in my childhood home for winter holidays. I close my eyes and can smell candy-cane cookies baking plus see the snow falling outside. This occurs regardless of where I am in the world and what the weather looks like. Why does a simple song have this timeless power?

When I work with clients to weave together meaningful ceremonies, I see a few reasons why. Nostalgically, music may connect us to uplifting sensory experiences in our life stories: sights, sounds, smells, and tactile sensations like brisk winter air. Emotionally, music may help our bodies release mood enhancing endorphins and experience a natural high. Physiologically, certain rhythms have the ability to lower our heart rates and feel more peaceful.

For me as a Celebrant, music is an essential part of creating a meaningful space and time during ceremonies, because of its power to transport.  Music speaks to us on many levels. (I love the mystery of how many levels!) Like spiritual beliefs, music preferences are so personal.  I do see how a single song or whole symphony calls people to a certain place and a certain time in their lives.  The catalyst may plainly be lyrics or the way the music feels.

In any case, while I work and enjoy this sunny desert day, I’m listening to my old Rocky Mountain Christmas album, imagining snowflakes drifting out of the sky.

With love,

Kristine

I am recharged and ready to revise a draft mother blessing ceremony this week.

I spent the weekend camping with friends, south of Arivaca, Arizona. We hiked, ate stone soup, sang by the fire, laughed and told stories. Did I mention yet that I love hearing and telling stories? Well, yes. And I love poetry, too. (A good thing, because stories and poems are two of my richest resources as a weaver of ceremonies!)

While camping, mother nature reminded me why I am often inspired by Mary Oliver’s poetry. As I viewed an inky night sky through my tent window, seeing a sparkling moon rise over the mountains, I thought of her poem When (from the Fall 2009 Parabola). If you haven’t read her work, it gives you a good taste:

When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know

any of us, what happens then.

So I try not to miss anything.

I think, in my whole life, I have never missed

the full moon

or the slipper of its coming back.

Or, a kiss.

Well yes, especially a kiss.

Mmmmm, a kiss! If you already know her work, do you have any favorite Mary Oliver poems you would like to share?

Kristine

I am a Life Cycle Celebrant.

I compose and lead celebrations for a full spectrum of major life events. We are all familiar with the ‘big three’: birth, marriage and death. Pause for a second though – to ponder the other major events we may experience. Just to name a few: adopting a child, empty nesting, surviving illness, aging or moving an elderly parent into a care facility. Traditionally, our culture does not recognize these passages with either ritual or ceremony. We usually go through the motions, just suck it up and get ready for the next day of work.

Alternatively, we can choose to acknowledge events outside the ‘big three’ with meaningful ceremonies, to simply help us grasp what is truly happening. In some instances, this may occur within spiritual communities or churches, like the story below . If you do not participate in either, you might consider creating a customized celebration with Sweetgrass Ceremonies. (Yes. ;~D A shameless little nudge in a creative direction!)

Take an adoption blessing for example, where parents of a newly adopted child mark their transition into family status. Actress Nia Vardalos wrote a heart felt post about her own experience with her newly formed family and adopted daughter. I love Nia’s concluding words:

“Curiously, we humans seem to need these rituals to get things into our skulls. There isn’t just one reason we need these rites. Sometimes we need to witness, sometimes we need the catharsis. That ceremony on that day was healing and more importantly, helped it sink in that I am a parent, no matter how my child came to me.”

Good food for thought on a few levels!

Kristine

A new day. A new month. A new blog.

This morning I turned the page to September in my old-timey wall hanging calendar. (Yes, I use the calendar app on my iphone, yet I still love my one on the wall, too!) It features the artwork of Michael Chiago, Sr., a Tohono O’Odham artist. His inviting watercolor painting shows O’Odham women collecting ripe priclkly pear fruits. Then I noticed how the new moon on September 18th is the ‘Dry Grass Moon’. Their traditional calendar, like so many cultures, follows the cycles of the natural world.

It got me thinking about how we mark time today. And naturally, I thought of Sweetgrass Ceremonies. I founded it to help people pause and celebrate their life milestones. I’m here to be a gentle guide while co-designing ceremonies for the full spectrum of life events. As I work, I will pay close attention to the cycles of the natural world. They keep me grounded, humbled, awake and alive while I serve others.

This is my first blog entry. I feel like this virtual space is a little table in the corner of a bustling cafe -  where I leave notes for others to find – to be curious about, find inspiration in, cry or laugh at. Who knows? For now, I like the mystery of it. Kind of like turning a new page on your calendar, feeling not entirely sure what the month ahead holds. One thing for sure though: there will be a new moon.

Happy September to you,

Kristine

P.S. Here is a photo of me (taken by Lindsay A. Miller), so you can put a ‘face with a voice’. I’m with my greyhound friend named Tiny. We’ve experienced ten years of life together. She is why I provide services for people and their animal companions at Sweetgrass.