A Weekend of Remembrance
As we move into Memorial Day Weekend, I wanted to pause and take a moment to acknowledge all who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. When I became a Marine, the meaning and purpose of this weekend shifted for me. Before that, it was the weekend that marked the end of the school year, beginning of Summer break, and long, hot days in Texas.
I was fortunate to serve during times of peace and don't personally know anyone who I should be remembering. My husband, Scott, however, lost a very close friend in Iraq and several Soldiers he trained with. The loss of his buddy, Chase, forever changed him and still impacts him today. I think for him, there doesn't need to be a Memorial Day. Every day is a day of remembrance that his friend is forever 22 and not getting to experience life on Earth.
Ironically, President Harry Truman proclaimed Memorial Day to also be a day of Prayer for Permanent Peace in 1950. I learned that TODAY. So, this year will be different as I intentionally bring that into my pause.
I will be doing a Loving Kindness Meditation, too. Click the button to listen the one that I recorded for you back in January. Doing variations of Loving Kindness, or Maitrī, has been helpful on the days when our world feels like a lot and there's nothing that I can do to change it.
It's an ancient Buddhist practice that helps us to connect with compassion, kindness, and good will towards ourselves and others. It can also be a powerful form of self-care & collective healing and have a positive effect on stress, anxiety, health, and empathy.
UW-Madison did a study on the impact of compassion meditation on the brain. They found that it changed the activity in the Insula, which is one of the reasons I named the studio Insula Yoga (it also means island in Latin)..."The insula is extremely important in detecting emotions in general and specifically in mapping bodily responses to emotion — such as heart rate and blood pressure — and making that information available to other parts of the brain."
Sending you so much love. May you take time to pause this weekend to breathe and consider adding prayers for permanent peace. If more of us knew that Memorial Day holds duality in remembering deaths from war and praying for permanent peace, maybe we could inch closer to that grand reality.
xx, Vanessa
