⚡️ Enlightening Bolts

🌍 Earth FM: Listen to nature sounds, fall in love with the Earth. Listen here.

🌊 Daughter of the Sea: For Jaeyoun Kim, the ocean is more than a connection to family; it’s a path to healing. Watch here.

🚀 Space Elevator: A fun site that shows you the relative height high-flying objects, animals, and natural phenomena reach. Try it here.

🎇 Image of The Week

Mount Fiji behind a blooming grove of Baby Blue Eyes flowers also known as Nemophila Menziesii. Taken in May of 2024 by Marcus Andre.

 🙏 Unearthing Gratitude

That which is pervasive becomes invisible. Novelty is what we notice. This is why we take things for granted.

We forget we’re standing upon a wealth of blessings as our mind tracks the ebbs and flows, gains and losses.

So I invite you to really look around and take stock of all that you have.

All of the creature comforts you have that would shock the royals of ancient times. All the people in your life who have not yet left this earth. The capabilities and skills you possess and all the ways you continue to grow.

Find the beauty quietly residing beneath the quibbles and complaints.

Although we might suffer and endure difficulties, there is still so much to be grateful for. Do what you can to unearth that gratitude and offer it to others. It could mean more than you’ll ever know.

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 🌻 Reverence of Approach

Digest this segment from an interview with John O’Donohue:

“Covington: Anam cara means “soul friend.” Underneath, is your book about being a friend to yourself?

O’Donohue: Yes, most things that are true and lasting have a symmetry between inside and out. Your outward relationship toward your beloved, if it is not mirrored internally by a loving relationship with yourself, is reduced and limited. You end up scraping from him or her what you are not giving yourself. But if you are nourished at your own table, you do not need so desperately to be fed by someone else; consequently, you can be free and open with that person.

This is true of our relationship to the world as well. When you approach even the simplest object, the depth that you see in that object will be proportionate to the depth you bring to it. One of the most interesting philosophical movements of the mid-twentieth century was hermeneutics: the science of interpretation. The key question in hermeneutics is always “How do you approach a text?” — and philosophers use the word text broadly. It could be restated as “Through what lenses and apparatus do you look at something?” You should be constantly aware of your own act of approaching anything. When you know what you are putting into it, and what you are taking from it, the text — or object, or person — has a better chance to meet you as itself.”

Pairs nicely with another quote of his:

“What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation. When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”

🤓 Learn This Word

Mudita: The pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being or happiness

⏳ From The Archives

A hand-picked link from a previous edition of 🌀🐇

The Surprising Psychological Benefits of Dance Therapy

When a group of psychologists from the U.K. visited Rwandan villagers to help heal genocidal trauma through talk therapy, the psychologists were soon after asked to leave.

For Rwandan genocide survivors, rehashing their traumatic memories to a stranger while sitting in tiny rooms with no sunlight didn’t heal their wounds at all — it just poured salt on them, forcing them to relive the trauma over and over again.

That wasn’t their idea of healing.

They were used to singing and dancing beneath the sun in sync to spirited drumming while surrounded by friends. That’s how they healed from trauma and other mental ailments.

The Rwandans aren’t alone.

For thousands of years and in multiple cultures, dance has been used as a communal, ritualistic, healing force, from the Lakota Sun Dance (Wiwanke Wachipi) to the Sufi whirling dervishes (Sema) to the Vimbuza healing dance of the Tumbuka people in Northern Malawi.

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