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Goodbye Amsterdam

This photo is in De Groene Hemel in Westerpark where I spent a lot of time this last couple of years offering Active Hope Circles and breathwork ceremonies. Gratitude to this magical place.

This is our last week in Amsterdam before moving on to our Swiss adventures. Amidst this busy and emotional transition, I want to express my deep gratitude to Amsterdam and my community for 15 incredible years.

It is love that brought me to Amsterdam! My life here has been an expansion into love in so many ways. ❤️ 1 year after arriving, I became a 1st-time mother, experiencing the joy of giving birth in a culture where home births, midwives, kraamzorgs and doulas are cherished.

Motherhood brought me closer to myself, teaching me to listen to the rhythms of my body, to nurture myself and others, connecting with my intuition. This transformative journey led me to mindfulness.

After the birth of my second daughter, I took a leap of faith, leaving my job as a global communications consultant to share the practice of mindfulness with my community and to be more present for my daughters.

Amsterdam has been not only the birthplace of my 2 beautiful daughters but also of my heart-centred business “Experience Mindfulness”. Over the past decade, I had the privilege of supporting my community and organisations as a mindfulness and self-compassion trainer and through mindful birthing and doula work to empower women during their birthing journeys.

Thank you to all the people and families I have supported through this work. Thank you for your trust and allowing me into such vulnerable moments in your life. It’s been absolutely heart opening in so many ways to witness your Life transformations and guide you along the way.

I then pursued additional training as a coach supporting others towards more joy, balance and purpose, also co-creating the Awaken Your Potential retreat with Anne Gélébart. My journey later led me to discover spiritual ecology and become a facilitator of the Work that Reconnects bringing together purpose, environmental awareness & community. For the past 1.5 years, the Active Hope community I initiated has gathered bi-weekly, enabling connection, empowerment, and inspiration to anchor a regenerative culture and embody the change we wish to see in the world.

With profound gratitude to my teachers and co-facilitators in Amsterdam and beyond, all my clients and those who attended my retreats & circles.

Earlier this year, I became a breathwork coach further empowering my offering, a special thank you to the Nieuw Yoga School . The transformations I’ve witnessed in breathwork sessions have been life-changing.

Thank you to my amazing friends supporting me along the way of my own huge personal transformation and growth. Huge gratitude to myself for taking this brave leap of faith, the road less travelled, creating my own way, to be continued in Switzerland.

Saying goodbye is the hardest but I carry all these experiences and connections with me. Farewell and thank you Amsterdam, you’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Forever grateful. I’ll be back! 🙏❤️🌟💫

Active Hope Circle – Honouring our Pain

Grateful for a beautiful, connecting and heart-opening Active Hope Gathering.✨
Feeling cracked open and so nourished by the deep ecology practices we engaged in with a beautiful group of change-makers, regenerating the land, transforming education, leading the energy transition, healers, artists and activists.
I’ve been looking for fertile ground to share this work and finally these intentions are manifesting, the work is magically finding the right people, moving to where it’s most needed.
Honored to initiate and guide this process and co-create together. Grateful to my many teachers, soul connections, support along the way allowing me to align to this new path I have been called to. 🙏
Yesterday after opening with a gratitude prayer “The Words that come before All Else” from the Haudosenee people (their gift to the world supporting us to remember what is sacred), we moved into the second stage of the Spiral 🌀 Honouring our Pain with an inquiry, a circle dance, a profound grief ritual with such touching sharing of our pain for the world. We ended the evening singing, my heart is full with all the beautiful songs shared honouring the Earth and our wild nature, so healing to sing together with intention, simple and powerful ❤️🙏✨
One particularly touching moment was hearing a man in the circle voice how it was time perhaps for men to pause and listen to the women, he recognized the deep connection of women with the land. It was such a gift beyond words to receive his words.
And totally aligned with my path of harmonizing with the Earth and diving deeper into the feminine.
Enjoying the journey and all the places it is taking me.
You can join our last gatherings before the summer or autumn circles, please email me marjorie@experiencemindfulness.nl for more details.

The Web of Life – A work that Reconnects meditation

Do you walk through life with deep appreciation and awareness of everything that sustains your life? The Earth that carries you, the air that fills you with life energy, the soil that nourishes you, the sun that warms you, the trees that offer cool, fresh air, timeless beauty and wisdom, your numberless ancestors laying the foundations on which you rest, billions of years of evolution weaved into your body, brain, nervous system. Who we are and what we do today as a species will determine the foundations on which future generations lay on for better or worse.

Imagine if we actually evolved daily with awareness of and reverence for this interconnectedness, the world today would look pretty different… it is time to integrate this knowledge and let it be our compass as we move forward in these chaotic times.

Here’s a meditation to integrate awareness of this interconnectedness inspired by Joanna Macy’s amazing work.

Live with the world inside of you, appreciating the rich heritage you inherited simply by being Human now and create conditions nurturing the well-being of future generations.

Marjorie Lumet on Instagram: “The Web of Life meditation Inspired by Joanna Macy – The Work that Reconnects This meditation invites us to sense deeply our…”

#interconnectedness #protectingLife

Autumn Equinox Gathering – Tend to the Fire Within – 22 September from 18h to 22h

Let’s gather together to welcome and celebrate the Autumn Equinox.
After buzzing, bountiful, blissful, bustling summer adventures, we are landing back into our daily routines. The sun and warmth are still lingering to the delight of many (and the despair of other living beings yearning for rain). As the daily amount of light continues to decrease, we are slowly but surely invited to move inwards, to begin to slow down as we move into autumn. Energetically speaking we are already in autumn. The energy of the trees and plants is retrieving inwards and downwards, animals are harvesting and preparing for winter.
We can sometimes forget we are part of this natural world unfolding, but deep inside we know how intrinsically interconnected we are to it and how wise it is to follow its rhythms that support our own existence in every way. Becoming totally out of sync with these rhythms (as modern, fast-paced life often is) harms our environment and threatens our own health and wellbeing.
Let’s gather and remember this wisdom that we once lived by, that we still hold deep within for our own well-being and the vitality of our community and natural surroundings.
Join me for an evening to honour the Autumn Equinox, this moment of transition that, as any moment of change, brings with it an opportunity for awakening and transformation.
Together we will engage in practices to honour the seasons, to tune in to what is present within and around us, to what wants to be known, to reflect in meditation and share together in community, in circle.
What you can expect?
– Gratitude practices for the abundance of what we have received and harvested, for the gifts and lessons learned
– Releasing ceremony to let go of what is no longer serving our growth and the world around us
– Nature connection practice to listen deeply, intuitively & gather wisdom from the Life around us
– Clarifying, setting intentions and voicing what we want to embody or create in the forthcoming period
We will engage in practices inside and outside, meditations & visualisations as well as group/pair inquiry practices & explorations, circle sharing, ritual and ceremony, including moments of song and/or dance. The flow of the day and many practices are sourced from or inspired by The Work that Reconnects * to which I weave into my own unique experiences, creativity and grounding in mindfulness.
Practical Details
Registrations: send an email to marjorie@experiencemindfulness.nl by 18th September to reserve your spot. An email will follow up with practical and payment details.
Date: 22 September 2022
Time: 18h – 22h (including some autumn delicacies, everyone is invited to bring something to share)
Location: Embodied Empowerment (in a cosy wooden cabin surrounded by trees on the Sloterplas lake)
Price : €60 euros
In the spirit of conscious contribution, as well as openness through hopefully accommodating diverse social groups, I am happy to accept student/low income fee /exchange of services so please do get in touch if you are interested but cannot pay total amount or if you have something specific to offer.
* The Work that Reconnects is sourced from the vision and teachings of Joanna Macy and supports us to develop our well-being & vitality, our inner resources and community in the face of uncertainty around social and ecological transition. The Work that Reconnects offers a rich variety of profound psychological and spiritual practices inspiring a shift in consciousness and transforming our denial or helplessness into empowered, creative and collaborative action. These practices are interwoven in a dynamic Spiral structure across the following 4 stages: Coming from Gratitude, Honouring Our Pain for the World, Seeing with New and Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth.

A few days living in an off-grid eco-community with my girls

 

Back in Amsterdam after a 7-week summer break filled with adventure, nature, wonder, community & blissful shared moments.
After enjoying the Mediterranean sea, we hiked and meandered through the breath-taking Pyrenees and we spent the last days of our holiday in a small, cosy ecovillage in SW France “La Ferme Légère”. They are living “off grid” on a beautiful farm totally renovated in an ecological way and completely autonomous in energy, water and vegetables. La Ferme Légère (https://fermelegere.greli.net/) facilitate many workshops on food, water, energy autonomy as well as retreats around “The Work that Reconnects”. This is how I ended up there through my friend Sylvie Chasselay who lives there and trained with me as a Work that Reconnects facilitator last autumn.
It was special to experience this lifestyle with my girls and the first time we had an immersive experience in an eco-community together : we slept in Sylvie’s beautiful yourte, made our own delicious sourdough bread, our cheese, took care of the many animals there, helped in the huge vegetable garden, mixed up different textures to create nourishing soil for seedlings we planted, we harvested and enjoyed delicious vegetables and fruit, helped prepare meals for large groups in the kitchen cooked on woodfire and with solar ovens. We could participate in and witness eco-construction as they were adding a ceiling to the bakery (with the plan to bake bread for the neighbourhood as an additional source of revenue). We learnt about the healing properties of many plants and flowers which we identified during a foraging walk and in a short time we learnt tons about macerating flowers, roots & leaves in oil or alcohol and made some of our own healing balms. We had many moments of sharing our feelings and thoughts about various topics in community with a large group of adults and children as young as 3 participating.
Here’s a little glimpse into some moments there as I was mainly without my phone (and one of the few there with a Smartphone…). See the video here Ferme Legere
I was grateful to have a taste of this experience with my girls. It certainly sparked some reflection in them and it inspires me to do my best to live in a more conscious and harmonious way … as challenging as it is in a city and a fast-paced society where living in harmony with the Earth isn’t the norm … yet:)