All posts by sigal

Welcome to Purim: Happiness is Served

Holidays

Purim is a holiday dedicated to happiness and fun.
On Purim we are “commanded” to be happy and have fun.

But what if you don’t feel like engaging in the fun?

That is why it is a “commandment!” Even when, or especially when, you don’t feel happy or you are not in the mood to celebrate, Purim is here to engage you in the practice of having fun.

Purim is an opportunity to practice shifting your mood. I think seeing the conditions to shift one’s mood and mindset is a very valuable skill to have! The commandment to rejoice and have fun during Purim invites us into the realm of  playfulness. It facilitates for the experience of being silly, rowdy, playful and carefree which encourages freedom to be playful.

I have shared about setting the right conditions instead of setting goals, for living the life we desire. Happiness and having fun work in similar ways. On Purim, we set the conditions for playfulness and are  reminded of how joy feels.
We know from studies that smiling and laughing, even for no reason at all, changes how we feel. When we smile and laugh we set the physical, chemical, and neural conditions to feeling happier. 
Purim is an interesting combination of fun and masquerading. It works because freeing ourselves to be playful, in how we dress and behave on Purim, sets the conditions to silliness and giddiness, and that in turns contributes to more happiness and encourages more freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression goes together with feeling authentic and opens us to more joy and fun.

I hope you don’t miss out on the opportunity of Purim, and also in your life everyday, to be silly, rejoice, play, lough, smile and express your aliveness with joy.

Kabbalah Retreat for Inner Peace MAY 19-21 at Kripalu Retreat Center

Polyvagal Theory: A Mendful Pointer to Wellbeing

Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

Polyvagal theory and other neuroscience teach about important systems that regulate our responses. These new areas of study are important for us to understand because they point us to wellbeing. The theories explain patterns in our body-mind which heavily influence our lives; physiologically, psychologically, relationally and cognitively. 

I have seen the positive effect of sharing this information with my students. A beautiful shift can happen when we learn how the body responds to fear and stress. It helps because it can stop us from taking things personally or believing we are broken beyond repair. It  points us onto a kinder mendful path toward our hope and strength. This knowledge along with guided MENDtations and self inquiry exercises can help when we are dealing with negative arousal responses. Many of my student learn to relax more, rebuild resiliency and access more joy in a relatively short time.

What I teach in my retreats and personalized mentoring sessions  is now supported by the growing body of research and knowledge from neuroscience. We combine guided practices  and conversations to help create the conditions for the desired shifts back to health, contentment and ease. Centuries before seeds of neuroscience theories were even thought of, spiritual and religious practices such as meditation, chanting, visualization, prayer, tribal and physical rituals and cognitive methods, were used to calm, destress and point us in the direction of joy and contentment.  It is powerfully transformative when we delve into ancient practices and teachings now with the added knowledge of the new findings.

We discover how that they go together well because they address the same human needs; the freedom and easing of fear, stress, anxiety, discontent, agitation and unhappiness. I feel awe when I see these connections because they reflect to me humanity’s desire and ability to engage in a continues and expansive exploratory creative unfolding toward betterment of our conditions.

The retreats I teach are immersive and supportive experiences where we relax and let our full selves be. We learn how the conditioned unnecessary reactivity in the body-mind act as door ways to healing and positive change. It’s amazing what can be done in three days! Participants are able to delve deep into their inner spaces and experience beautiful connection to soul. It’s profound and moving to witness. 

Participants report that the group experience and the exercises are soul nourishing, insightful and mendful on many levels.

Hollie wrote: “Following Rabbi Sigal’s Mendful program at Kripalu I have experienced a shift, a softening, a turn towards wonder. So much of this heart opening was a result of ‘marinating’ in the loving community Sigal held for us.”

I love guiding and supporting people in retreats and with personalized Mendful Life Mentoring. You don’t have to do it alone. I am here to help. Together we journey the mendful path.

Retreats at Kripalu 

Heartfelt Prayers

Mendful Path

I’m writing this at the end of an eventful week. 

At the end of any week we need a Sabbath; to stop, rest, reflect, renew, and find peace (shalom) but we especially need it this week. 

Death and sickness from Covid-19 are at a record high.

History was made in Georgia with the election of an African American candidate and a Jewish candidate to the Senate for the first time in the South. 

The revered sanctuary of American Democracy, the Capitol, was violently attacked.

The attack shuddered more than windows and furniture. It shuddered our peace and trust. It had shaken to the core the delicate stability of a political Democratic discourse. Maintaining Democracy is hard. Living together in a diverse society is challenging, but we must learn to do it better. In wars, there are always casualties and there is always destruction. In civil wars we kill our neighbors and destroy our neighborhoods. I hope we stop and consider the high cost of choosing to live in confrontation and with hatred, before they become violent words and actions. 

In the spirit of Shabbat, which provides for us time and space to make and remember peace, I offer these heartfelt prayers for all of us to regain our peace. 

I pray we call on ourselves and each other to find peace and mercy. 

I pray we begin to imagine how to pave the way to cooperation and healing. 

I pray we learn from the mistakes of the past and better cherish and protect our Democracy. 

I pray and challenge us to become activists of peace and not of war. 

In time, I pray, that we may find mendful paths of teshuvah; turning and returning to peace and cooperation. 

I pray we embrace non-violence, own responsibility, make reparation, seek justice and act kindly. 

I pray we find a way to Tikkun Olam; to talk and listen, to reconcile and mend the torn fabric of our country.

I pray for the healing of all who are sick. May those who mourn be consoled in a loving community and their loved ones Rest In Peace. 

I pray for the strength and wisdom of the medical professionals and all those who aid in supporting others and the medical systems. 

May God bless and protect us all. Rabbi Sigal

I hope to see you at the Winter Mendful Gathering Series starting Sunday, January 17th at 4pm.

Justice, justice you shall pursue

Mendful Path

Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. (Deuteronomy 16:20)

My heart aches more each day as the heat of hatred and racism is rising, and dry tinder of broken promises is accumulating on our streets. It’s hard to witness the injustice, cruelty, violence, disregard for human life and property, hatred and anger. People are hurting, scared, hopeless and angry. Private and public spaces and properties are devastated. The voices of the oppressed and their supporters are rising and they need to be heard. America is mourning the promise of justice and liberty as we mourn the dead.

History is repeating itself in familiar ways before our eyes, and this time it is on steroids. It’s almost hard to believe we are in the middle of three simultaneous disasters, but it cannot be denied. We have a pandemic comparable to the 1918 influenza epidemic, an economic situation reminiscent of the Great Depression and racial anger and violence similar to that of the sixties. 

How we navigate through all this as individuals and as a society will determine the future. 

What can we do?

Although the heat on the streets is this week’s focus, and it seems like the coronavirus disappeared, it did not. Please stay safe and follow physical distancing guidelines. I’m asking us to continue to remain strong and hopeful despite the heartbreak and despair and the long road to mending ahead of us on all three fronts: the epidemic, the economy and racism. We are agitated and upset about all of them and the call of the moment is to find a way to stay safe and calm as we find useful ways to respond. 

Pray and find solace as much as you can. Do connect with your breath to help calm down several time a day. Support one another with acts of caring and encouragement. Think of what right action you can take and what is wise and useful to do to advance our society in the right direction. One small step at a time, one relationship at a time. Be kind to everyone. We are all trying to figure out our way through this in the best way we know how. Be open to finding new paths to remain optimistic and creative. Necessity is the mother of invention. These are times which necessitate care, kindness, change and reinvention.

Racism has been with us for too long. We are strengthening our commitment to working for justice so it is not here for much longer. 

Let’s keep our hope for humanity alive and find the good on the path to justice, health and well-being.

At times like these when it’s hard to find the words, I find more solace and meaning in prayer, meditation, nature and connecting to others. I pray for peace, justice, repair and reconciliation. 

Please stay well and reach out to me for support when you need it.

Find Your Sanctuary of Calm

Let’s talk about LOVE

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

More than ever before we talk about love in different ways. It seems there is more appreciation to different kinds of love and friendships, which exceed romantic love. More than ever before we are not partnered for life, we are disappointed in relationships, we divorce, we start over again and again; romantic love is not as sustained and fulfilling as we hoped it would be. It’s not as promising as the romantic fairytales we were told. Not being married, or in a committed partnership, is a growing global trend, whether by choice or by circumstances, more people don’t marry and new ways of being in loving relationships are explored. It turns out, there are many ways to be in loving relationships.

Love is a large topic. It’s hard to put our arms around topic of love, but we try; measuring love and defining it. For some love is a feeling, a felt sense beyond words, to others it is a commitment, a covenant. To some it is security, to others a joy of vulnerability. To some a fulfilled desire, while for others an fulfilled longing. 

Whatever the conditioning of our culture is, I sense that underneath it all what we want is to be in authentic relationships. We want to be ourselves and relate to others who are authentically themselves. When we are in loving relationships we want to be seen, heard, feel connected and belong. In authentic loving relationships, these four qualities are important underpinnings, usually garbed with elaborate unconscious and conscious desires and needs. 

Alain de Botton who wrote Essays in Love defines love as charitable interpretation of others’ behavior. To love is to be willing to interpret someone’s not so appealing behavior with a more benevolence reason. Loving is accepting faults; being patient and charitable in our interpretation of unappealing behaviors. 

We are bound to disappoint and be disappointed, especially with people we love and whom love us. Love is not admiration alone, although we want it to be because it would be sooooo muuuuch easier. But real life love must include compromise and tolerance of unpleasant feelings and behaviors. It calls us to be mature in loving and living with the recognition we need to tolerate ambivalence. The disparity between what we like and the things we really don’t like. We tend to spend a lot of time and energy rejecting and resisting the things we don’t want to include in the mix of love and relationships, but reality is what it is and we need to accept it. 

Staying in relationships requires skills. Love is not just a matter of feelings. It hurts when we are disappointed, but with mendful skills and sensibilities we can navigate it better. We must stay in the conversation with others and with the different triggers within us, and not run away from them and avoid them. Resisting and avoiding actually make the things we try to avoid more resistant and painful.

In Mendful Path Living we cultivate a remembering we carry in our heart, namely, the intention to mend. The mendful mindset and the intention to mend are tucked in our heart and in our consciousness to help bring us back to love and mending.  How?

I have a regular daily practice of meditation and prayer to orient me ever so strongly to mending. More and more I see how it helps usher me back from the edge of discomfort and discontent to balance and calm. It’s especially helps me respond with more understanding and care in challenging moments. Remembering all humans experience disappointments, hurts, and challenges, we prepare and support ourselves to respond more calmly and productively in stressful situations. The question is not whether we will be challenged, because we surely will, but instead we prepare and plan how we will respond mendfully. How in the moment we don’t allow our habitual reactivity to get the best of us and create more suffering and harm. And, when things get away from us sometime we mend from there. We ask for forgiveness, forgive others and make amends. 

Mendful love is how we live. One conversation, one encounter, one small mend at a time. May your love flourish in many colors and textures within you and in all your relationships, whether you are partnered or not.

 Mendful Living from Your Heart – It’s all about love!
Even disappointments, loss and heartbreaks are about love.

Retreats at Kripalu Center  in May, July, December  

MAY 15-17 MENDFUL RETREAT
Resilience After Disappointment, Loss, and Heartbreak

JULY 15-17 RELEASE, MEND, AND THRIVE FROM THE INSIDE OUT

Information about Mentoring – See Special Offer


This New Year Resolve to Mend

Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

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We are the clay, and life, the potter’s hands.

Life changes and shapes us into what we are throughout our lifetime. Do you remember the times you softly surrendered into the hands of change like soft clay, and allowed life to transform you? And, do you also remember how at other times your vessel cracked or broke?

Broken and mended is beautiful. Leonard Cohen, his memory a blessing, sang: “There is a crack in everything that’s how the light gets in.” The Japanese design concept called Kintsugi, repairing broken pottery with liquid metal, makes them more beautiful by highlighting the cracks and the place of mending. Rabbinic lore from 2000 years ago teaches that the broken Tablets; Moses broke when he saw the people built a golden calf and worshiped it, when he came down from Mount Sinai the first time, are kept in the Ark of the Covenant along with the second Tablets engraved with the 10 commandments.

These examples of brokenness and mending  are beautiful inspirations to encourage us to embrace our brokenness, to stop hiding our humanity, mend when we can, love our scars and stop avoiding life. All brokenness, imperfections and pain are parts of our lives. Instead of spending another year afraid of making mistakes or hiding behind your scars, be daring. Find ways to embrace, accept things and mend more this year.  Although we have been broken and know the pain, and are surely to break and hurt again, we cannot  stop opening to the gift of this life. Yes, it’s hard. But, can we resolve to love ourselves and others, with our brokenness, scars and all and mend where we can?

As we are preparing to enter a new year. I want to remind us to not begin a new year with a list of all the ways we are not good enough, broken, wrong and disappointing. You know what I’m talking about, the practice of making New Year resolutions, in a harsh manner, aiming to fix all that is wrong and unacceptable in us.

Time to change the game. Change the approach. We make a resolutions list and soon forget our commitment to change. We feel disappointed. Adding shame and blame on top of the pile of what we already think is wrong with us, it’s not helpful. It turns out that instead of growing in self love and being helpful, the resolutions only help grow self hatred and disappointment in each passing year. Can we resolve to not use self deprecating and hating statements in an attempt to improve? How about resolving to include only resolutions that resonate as expression of the following: I love you and I care for you. We can try to apply changes, but also remember to not try so hard, guarding against causing more breaking instead of cultivating mending.

Please proceed with caution and be gently to avoid causing more harm within you and around you, even if it means not improving and stepping slowly into making big changes. Unless we all take the mendful path, choosing at each step to mend, no real healing and change will be possible.

Consider your motivations and set the right conditions to succeed. Use affirmations to bring you back to love and care and follow your intention with healthy actions to mend body, heart, mind and spirit.

I wish us all a mendful year!

I am here to help you individually and in groups, virtually, online and in person.

I look forward to connecting with you in the new year.

Love and blessings, Rabbi Sigal

Mendful living is here for you. Please join us to mend our world and ourselves.    RETREATS 

Instead of setting goals, set optimal conditions

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry, , ,

I loooooove retreats!

I’m honored to be entrusted with the opportunity to create optimal conditions that allow for learning and transformation at retreats or many years. I pray and hope “ah ha” moments and seeds of insights are planted during the retreat and are taken home bloom. The conditions you set at home along with the heartfelt intention to thrive will change your life.

The biggest benefit of a concentrated experience, like a retreat, aside from having fun, is having the time and guidance to learn with experiential methods. We have the time to mend and open to our authentic nature and our heart’s desire, try new things and listen intently. We return home with our commitment to pursue our desires, we better discern because we learn in the retreat how to best set the optimal conditions to succeed.

I’m reminded of the positive effect of being on a retreat when I read students’ reflections. They consistently express renewed hope in themselves and in life, and connected to expanded awareness and growing commitment to self love and care they are sure to succeed. I feel grateful to be able to contribute in this way to my students’ lives, and I’m inspired by my students’ courage to open their hearts to themselves, each other, and the experience. It’s especially moving to hear about the positive and sustainable changes in their lives after the retreat.

Where to begin? Knowing our heart’s desire is  a good beginning. It points the way to loving self-care, giving proper attention, and cultivating nourishing behaviors and practices for the seeds to grow. Unless we learn to listen to the call of the heart and commit to taking the steps and actions to fulfill it, it will be hard to affect change.   

Take small steps to self love and care on the mendful path

Remember why you are doing what you are doing! You love yourself and your life and what to feel more joy, contentment and peace.

Schedule regular time for practices that support listening and living from your heart. Resolve to keep your commitment to your practice especially when resistance, negative thoughts, discomfort and forgetting arises. Be patient. It will take time to adjust and cultivate new habits. Plan for small, measurable and reachable expectations. Endure, adjust and stay focused until they become habits.

Use tools of remembering through  out the day. Write a meaningful word and display where you can see it, write it in your daily calendar, read a daily affirmation you like for 10 days and then choose another. Set a reminder alarm on your phone every hour to breathe a relaxing breath, repeat your word or affirmation and settle into a moment of stillness. Pray.

Develop new supportive habits. Daily “refilling activities” are centering and helpful. I like to take walks in nature, ride a bike, sit in a sauna or a hot tub, listen and read inspiring thoughts, write a gratitude list, and meditate in stillness for 10 minutes or more throughout the day. Also, resolving to participate in group activities, like yoga classes, and inviting others to walk or meditate with you is important and nurturing.

May you remember your heart’s desire each day and create the right conditions for the seeds of your intention to grow and guide your life. May the time and effort you invest blossom into what you desire to have and experience in your life. May ease and contentment find you.

Mentoring –  individual and small groups 

RETREATS

Mendful Living is Soul-Centered Living

Meditation, Mendful Path, Self Inquiry

It takes courage to embrace the unknown and to find our way in new situations. Change can be scary and confusing. We must find “ground” first to calm down, so that the fear based part of the brain is not the only thing controlling our behavior. I call that part of the brain, the F brain; fear, fight, flight and freeze.
The Mendful Path mentors us to find our soul-center so we can stay settled in the calm and peace of our being, especially when we are feeling scared and confused. Mendful  practices teach us ways to bring more calm to the body-mind, fostering understanding of the underlying deep interconnection of all things. 

I am leading retreats at Kripalu in Decembe and May to explore the relationships between mendful, soul, contentment, ease and happiness.
These holistic retreats provide a direct approach to living authentically and cultivating peace and well-being in all aspects of your daily life. I will explain puzzling concepts and guide healing contemplative practices that focus on reducing discontent and strengthening trust in your authentic experience. Practice transformative meditations, relaxation, and self-inquiry to point the way toward wonder, enjoyment, ease, and contentment.

I hope to see you there.
Blessings,  Rabbi Sigal

Contact us for details

Weddings   Bnai Mitzvah

Mentoring &  Meditation

Contact us when you are ready for individual mentoring. Sigal has room for a few new students

It’s Mending Time

Meditation, Mendful Path

Together we mend our lives and the world. One conversation, one action, one commitment, one small step at a time.

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More than ever, the world is calling us to fulfill our mission of Tikkun Olam.

Tikkun Olam is rooted in Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah and is summoning us to strive toward repair, healing and mending the world.

Disconnect and loneliness are common now a days and we need to find ways to bring our attention together for caring conversations. To reconnect and begin to mend our feelings of brokenness and separation.

With Mendful, a new word I coined, I hope to communicate a big idea in a simple and direct way.
MENDFUL, describes in a word a healing mindset.  A cluster of ideas and attitudes informing a mending and healing way of being. 

I hope MENDFUL the new mind set becomes a primary m i n d s e t  for healing ourselves and the world. In Mendful I combine several ideas and attitudes to reclaim our connectivity and humanity. Among them are: kindness, mindfulness, gracefulness, heartfulness, caring conversations, listening, sharing, patience, authenticity, creativity, remembering our deep interconnectedness, generosity, receptivity, forgiveness, compassion and peace.

Let’s gather, connect and mend… Please join us in cultivating and spreading mendfulness and healing our hearts and the world. We gather to meditate, pray, learn and engage in healing conversations. We are bringing more people to the conversation with virtual forums and resources, and we hope you join us.

What we need is TIME TO MEND … Join us to learn how to relax, feel less burdened, breathe a little easier, mend and heal.

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Mendful Living Mentoring with Rabbi Sigal for individuals and small groups. contact us for details and to schedule a free 15 minutes consultation for new students.

RETREATS at Kripalu Center, MA, With Rabbi Sigal (Registration and Information)
Midweek Retreat October 17–19
Mendful Living from Your Soul: Fall Back Into Ease and Contentment
December 23-25
Wisdom of Kabbalah: A Retreat for Inner Peace
December 28-30
Mendful Path Retreat for Mending Heart and Soul

Ease into Messiness

Holidays, Mendful Path, Passover

Why Seder?

Seder in Hebrew means order.                                            Receive our newsletter

Messiness is life. Humans have been talking and writing about chaos and messiness for thousands of years. It has always been a part of our experience and motivated us to change. With determination and creativity we seek to bring about more order.

Out of chaos the Earth was formed, a few ancient myths of creation tell us, the Genesis narrative among them. The goal of these stories is to make sense of the unknown and to organize. The general thrust of these myths is that an all-knowing and powerful God takes charge of chaos and with superb wisdom was able to organize the world and guide it. (Don’t you sometimes wish your world could be effortlessly and efficiently organized like that?)

But still, even with a super powerful deity, the messy story continues. Our human experience is a chain of messes, monumental ones and smaller ones; personal, communal and environmental. To help us cope with this reality, many aspects of every religion are dedicated to organization and order. For example: rituals, laws, governance etc. They serve a purpose.

We don’t like messiness and we want to have more control because we are uncomfortable with the unknown. We like things to be more predictable, known, so they are less anxiety provoking. We don’t like surprises. Or maybe we like only good surprises. (Although, some of us rather not even experience those.) In our age, when anxiety is a prevalent condition, a pause of “Seder” of ease and enjoyment is a welcomed remedy.

When we clean and prepare for Passover with anticipation for a night of orderliness (Seder) we remember messiness is part of life, but we also remember our ability to bring about order. We are able to shape and control space and time (i.e, ritual.)

The Jewish year cycle of holidays invites us to routinely encounter themes on the map of human and societal needs. Spring holidays are opportunities for cleaning, organizing and celebrating order and openness. An invitation to remember that having order and routines can be supportive to us spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. Predictability that comes with order allows the body-mind to relax on all levels. It is relaxing when the amount of decisions we need to make is reduced. At the Seder we can lean back, sing, eat and enjoy. The order of the Seder, the meal and the story are basically prescribed, although many embellish on it for fun. The Seder ritual gives us the permission to effortlessly “ride” it to the end of the evening and declare it complete.

I hope you can enjoy the evening of order and ease. When we are at ease we open more fully and enjoy the mystery of life. Because, after all, life is a wonderful mystery, and with all the control we try to exercise, it’s messy and we don’t fully know. It may sound contradictory but, the more we ease into messiness, accepting life is an unknown mystery, the less anxiety we experience. In a way, reducing our angsts about needing to control everything, combined with some preparation and orderliness, allows us to relax into the mystery with more ease, and awe. That, my friends, is freedom.

I wish you a holiday of ease and contentment. Dayenu!