Dani Shapiro | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Yoga, While Exploding in Popularity, is Nearly Dead. A conversation between Waylon Lewis and Amy Ippoliti on Elephant Journal.

2. Good stuff on Bored Panda: Beautiful Tiny Animals Embroidered By Chloe Giordano and Japanese Artist Creates Fun Miniature Dioramas Every Day For 4 Years and 28 Magical Paths Begging To Be Walked.

3. Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt from Momastery. This is so good.

4. Good stuff from Huffington Post: 16 Beautiful Life Lessons From The Pen Of A Children’s Book Illustrator, and Meditation Isn’t Enough: A Buddhist Perspective on Suicide, and Your Body Is Not Your Masterpiece.

5. Vegan Avocado Chocolate Mousse recipe from Food Matters.

6. How & Why To Know Home and Conditions of Enoughness or the Art of Building Your Truer Life from Jennifer Louden.

7. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

Sit quietly for a few minutes and become mindful of your breath as it goes in and out. Then contemplate what you do when you’re unhappy or dissatisfied and want to feel better. Even make a list if you want to. Then ask yourself: Does it work? Has it ever worked? Does it soothe the pain? Does it escalate the pain? If you’re really honest, you’ll come up with some pretty interesting observations.

8. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel,

Trust is built by: speaking to yourself kindly, giving yourself the space to move in your own right timing, following through with the promises that you make yourself – starting again whenever you notice yourself breaking your own trust.

Trust is destroyed by: lying to yourself, speaking to yourself in a harsh and cruel manner, putting the needs of others ahead of your own, and forcing yourself to live in a way that is out of sync with your own values.

9. Recipe for Falling in Love, a beautiful poem from Julia on Painted Path.

10. Super Love Tees. *swoon*

11. Some important responses to recent events: Choose Courage from Brene’ Brown, and Seek pinpricks of light by Sherry Richert Belul, and Affected by Karen at Chookooloonks.

12. Creative Living with Jamie: Rachael Maddox.

13. ten books that could deepen how you live and books for deepening how you live, heal, create & love from Gemma Stone.

14. 6 Reasons You Should Stop Obsessing Over Alignment in Yoga Class from Yoganonymous.

15. Truthbomb from Danielle LaPorte, “Settling for crumbs doesn’t keep you fed – it keeps you starving.”

16. Note from the Universe,

Just look to those who already possess as you wish to possess or who have already achieved as you wish to achieve, Jill, and ask yourself whether or not they have some special gift that you don’t have? If they have more angels than you? If they’re any more loved than you are now loved? If they have suffered more, worked harder, or waited longer than you? If I would permit them to be “luckier” or have it easier than you? And you will see, after careful consideration, that their success depended upon none of these things. It arrived simply because they expected it to arrive, and then lived their lives accordingly.

17. what freedom is (and isn’t) from Tiffany Han.

18. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

It is SO GOOD to do GOOD things, so good! It is so good to make things happen and to help others and to cross things off of our lists and to seek out more of everything that is good.

There is a time to stop and rest, however. Rest is good. Rest is one of the very good things in life to do. Our bodies need rest, our minds need rest, our spirits need rest, our relationships need for us to be rested. Our jobs need for us to be rested. The GOOD GOOD things in the world that we do need a rested BEST of us.

Rest does not need to hold hands with guilt. We do not have to pay for rest when the rest is over. Rest is an investment and makes everything we do better, more valuable and more meaningful. WE MUST REST. Please, dear friend, let yourself rest. Rest physically by going to bed. Rest emotionally by letting go of expectations. Rest spiritually by turning over your worries, problems and anger.

In your quest for all that is good and true, decide TODAY that rest is one of the best and truest of all things. Our bodies were designed to rest. We are being true to who we are when we take the time to truly truly rest. Hear it, sweetheart?

You are so loved. Now get some rest…

19. Shared on Karen’s This Was a Good Week list, Maude White Brave Bird Paperwork. The shadows are almost as amazing as the art.

20. Wisdom from Rumi,

I have been a seeker and I still am,
but I stopped asking the books and the stars.
I started listening to the teachings of my soul.

21. 25 Things to Remember When Life Gets Rough from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

22. Things Girls Do That’d Be Creepy If A Guy Did Them from BuzzFeed Video. The final one, “casual wear,” made me laugh, made Eric laugh so hard it bent him over.

23. A Memoir Is Not a Status Update, Dani Shapiro on The New Yorker. I’m not sure I agree.

24. 8 Things I Learned From Being A Contestant On “The Biggest Loser” on MindBodyGreen.

25. Really, Yoga Journal? on Elephant Journal.

26. Art, Inc.: A Field Guide to the Psychology and Practicalities of Becoming a Successful Artist, a piece about Lisa Congdon’s new book on Brain Pickings.

1. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

We all have parts of ourselves that need working on. We all think thoughts that aren’t the best thoughts we could be thinking. We all do things we wish we would have done better, or differently, or not at all. We all make mistakes, every single day….every single one of us. And then, we all wake up every day with lots of chances to start over. It is one of the miracles of life…Let yesterday go, be done with it. Walk onto your light-filled path and make today a better day.

2. A Pathetic Internet Troll Called This Mom’s Little Boy Ugly. Her Reply Is Perfection. on Viral Nova.

3. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

The opposite of samsara (the cycle of suffering) is when all the walls fall down, when the cocoon completely disappears and we are totally open to whatever may happen, with no withdrawing, no centralizing into ourselves. That is what we aspire to, the warrior’s journey. That is what stirs us: leaping, being thrown out of the nest, going through the initiation rites, growing up, stepping into something that’s uncertain and unknown.

4. Yo Oprah, I’mma Let You Finish But Amy Poehler Has The Best Body Image Advice Of All Time on Upworthy.

5. You are a writer. So, write. Deeply. on Rebelle Society.

6. Prompt of the Week: Junk Mail Poetry from Wolverine Farm Publishing Co. & Bookstore, and my dear friend Chloé, the 2014 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins.

7. The generosity boomerang from Seth Godin.

8. Five things you can do to overcome fear on Life is Limitless.

9. The Bite I Chose Not to Take, from Mara Glatzel.

10. Truthbomb from Danielle LaPorte, “Make the necessary adjustments for your life to become more meaningful.”

11. A Conversation with Julia Cameron about Channeling Your Creativity on Huffington Post.

12. The ultimate guide to naming your “thing” from Alexandra Franzen.

13. Good stuff from Zen Habits: The Habit Action List and The Reality of This Moment.

14. Be Yourself – Short Documentary.

15. 6 Things That I Understand About The Fat Acceptance Movement from the Militant Baker.

16. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,

For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.

17. Good stuff from Bored Panda: Photographer Takes Stunning Surreal Photos With An Old $50 Film Camera and WTF? 22 Of The Weirdest and Most Unexplainable Pictures Ever and Hidden Macro World Revealed By Japanese Photographer Miki Asai.

18. Use These 19 Genius Cleaning Hacks This Spring. I Can’t Believe I Never Thought Of #13 Til Now. on Viral Nova. Seriously, #13 is brilliant.

19. Success, failure and the drive to keep creating, Elizabeth Gilbert’s second TED Talk, in which she says,

For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that’s how I pushed through it.

And,

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis, I don’t know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

Word.

20. The Moment This Man Finds Out He’s Going To Be A Grandpa Will Make You Tear Up on Huffington Post. Somehow “we’re getting a new puppy” never manages to elicit the same emotion…

21. Friday’s Confession: I Was Copied from Tiffany Han.

22. How to Be a Writer by M. Molly Backes on Medium.

23. The art of Sarah Jarrett.

24. By Another Way, a poem by Jan Richardson shared by Ronna Detrick on her blog.

25. My Formula for Stumbling Through with Grace from Be More with Less.

26. Wisdom from Kristin Noelle, who describes so perfectly where I am right now,

…those stretches when you’re still close enough to some “before” version of yourself to remember him or her well, to still have his or her knee-jerk feelings and reactions to things….but you’re not that version of yourself anymore either, and you’re noticing a whole new paradigm, a whole new way of being in the world, vying for attention and time.

27. Newspaper + marker = poetry: The story behind my newspaper blackout poems, on Medium from Austin Kleon.

28. Shared on Rowdy Kittens Happy Links: The Scratch Interview with Cheryl Strayed, and On the Long Haul from Dani Shapiro, and 10 Ways I Embraced Simplicity and You Can Too from Sandra Pawula.

29. What I Wish I Knew After My MFA Ended on the Brevity blog.

30. New Age Bullshit Generator.

31. Writing Practice – why it’s time to stop thinking of writing as a profession by Damien Walter.

32. Teachasana, “An online resource for yoga teachers and teachers-in-training.”

33. On writing, courage, and showing up on Life with Lucia.

34. 28 T-Shirts For When You Literally Cannot from BuzzFeed.

35. Wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook, Are you feeling more afraid than you need to feel?

36. How To Stop Making A Big Deal About Your Problems, Pema Chödrön on MindBodyGreen.

37. Having No Expectations: The Secret to Freedom and Happiness.