Smile! 16 Days!

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I Love My Bike, Yes I DO!!

We went to this amazing bike shop yesterday called BICUS (Bicycle Inter-Community Art and Salvage) that isn't so much a bike shop as it is a revolution, where shiney happy people were all over the place building bikes, going through bins and racks of bike parts, and they didn't look at us funny when we said "places like this are going to blossom up all over the place when peak oil hits!" Have you ever seen so many old rims lovingly hung up on racks before? Or forks hung over bars, like headless, armless cowboys riding the back of a broomstick, making a solid colorful wall of just bike forks? And in a place called Purgatory hung a long halway of "bikes in waiting", these were the frames, looking like dismembered body parts, waiting to be re-built and glide along bearing thier proud owner....not like purgatory at all, I thought. We fell in love with one such frame, it looked big enough to be built into a bike for me, and the bike shop boys agreed....we spent over an hour looking through parts, debating the pros and cons of building my own bike.

In the end, I got a beauty from Ordinary Bike Shop that is ready to be ridden NOW!! After a year of no bike, and taking into consideration all the driving it would take us to go into Tucson for bike building classes and parts, and the fact that we are trying to cut down our hours in the truck by getting us both on bikes, we opted for the instant satisfaction route. We now both want to build our own mountain bikes though, using the amazing service of love provided by BICUS. I'm all about re-cycling, and this place is what happens when re-cycling meets Lance Armstrong meets Picasso. Excellent!

My new bike got to sleep in the house last night, but didn't quite make it into bed with us, and I thought I would wake up bright and early and take it for a ride BUT

.....instead I woke up with an un-welcome cold that has kept me sneezing and blowing my nose ALL day, and drinking loads of ginger/lemon/cayenne tea. Where did it come from? Our neighbor, Michella, said that the flu is going around so perhaps I have a mild version of that. I'd like to think so...thankful that I have a mild version of something rather than "O shucks, why did I get a cold!!??" She also told me that I should check out my biorythms at this website, and so I did and amazingly my physical cycle is at a rock bottom low for today! So then we checked David's for the time he wasn't feeling so hot over Christmas, and the same thing! Can't say I'll be checking my biorythms all the time now, but it is interesting.

So, tomorrow David and I will go for a Valentines Day ride together.

What can you do today to prepare for your Juice Feast today? Smile!

A true smile is a thing of beauty, it softens the face, and that softness spreads all throughout the body and into the air around you. Like a flower, your smile causes others to smile. Smile, you are a flower! Practice smiling and lightness so that you may call on them when life is hiding your smile (as it will at times.) Sometimes it will feel as though it is Juice Feasting that is hiding your smile. Do not worry. If you practice smiling, it will not hide for long.

The Dandelion Has My Smile by Thich Nhat Hanh:

If a child smiles, if an adult smiles, that is very important. If in our daily lives we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. If we really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile? Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind.

How can you remember to smile when you wake up? You might hang a reminder - such as a branch, a leaf, or a painting, or some inspiring words - in your window or from the ceiling above your head, so that you notice it when you wake up. Once you develop the practice of smiling, you may not need a reminder. You will smile as soon as you hear a bird singing or see the sunlight streaming through the window. Smiling helps you approach the day with gentleness and understanding.

When I see someone smile, I know immediately that he or she is dwelling in awareness. This half smile, how many artists have labored to bring it to the lips of countless statues and paintings? I am sure the same smile must have been on the faces of the sculptors and painters as they worked. Can you imagine an angry painter giving birth to such a smile? Mona Lisa's smile is light, just a hint of a smile. Yet even a smile like that is enough to relax all the muscles in our face, to banish all worries and fatigue. A tiny bud of a smile on our lips nourishes awareness and calms us miraculously. It returns to us the peace we thought we had lost.

Our smile will bring happiness to us and those around us. Even if we spend a lot of money on gifts for everyone in our family, nothing we buy could give them as much happiness as the gift of our awareness, our smile. And this precious gift costs nothing. At the end of a retreat in California, a friend wrote this poem:

I have lost my smile,

but don't worry.

The dandelion has it.

If you have lost your smile and yet are still capable of seeing that a dandelion is keeping it for you, the situation is not too bad. You still have enough mindfulness to see that the smile is there. You only need to breathe consciously one or two times and you will recover your smile. The dandelion is one member of your community of friends. It is there, quite faithful, keeping your smile for you.

In fact, everything around you is keeping your smile for you. You don't need to feel isolated. You only have to open yourself to the support that is all around you, and in you. Like the friend you saw that her smile was being kept by the dandelion, you can breathe in awareness, and your smile will return.

I will never forget, years ago, the first time I noticed my smile was being kept for me by my community of friends, the whole world. I was walking home from work, feeling very low and sad, and I walked past a young girl swinging on her swing set in her back yard. I could not see her face, and only caught a brief glimpse of her long, golden hair flying up above her head and catching the sunlight, but it was enough to remind me that the smile is always there. And I felt instantly happy, and I smiled!

I read this last night in Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and had to share it as well. Speaking is a medicine man from in Bali, and he is explaining the importance of smiling to the author, who has just spent 4 months in India studying yoga and meditation.

"You can do Yoga," he says, "but Yoga too hard." Here, he contorts himself in a cramped lotus position and squinches up his face in a comical and constipated-looking effort. Then he breaks free and laughs, asking, "Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile."

So now, smile for your health, for your happiness, for your loved ones, and remember that the smile is always there for you, being kept very faithfully by your loving community of friends. Remember to smile even in your liver!!

We wish you all a very beautiful Valentines Day, and we celebrate you and the love that you embody at all times. You are loved!

Love Katrina and David.

PS. Kristen over at Kristen's Raw is going to start a 21 Day Juice Feast tomorrow and what better way to love yourself than to give yourself the gift of Juice Feasting??!! Her boyfriend and mom are going to be juicing with her too, and we are looking forward to reading all about it.