Cart

christmas

A Freer Way to Experience the Holidays

One of the best ways to keep the holidays from turning into a holidaze is by practicing mindfulness during this season. Not only will a mindfulness practice help you through… Read More

DIY: A Sustainable Holiday Season

The holiday season is hard on our beloved planet. We throw away 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s than at any other time of year.1 And about a… Read More

Making Room for Magic in our Giving

It’s not hard to get into the routine of buying lots of stuff for your loved ones during the holidays. We want them to be happy, they seem to want stuff, and stuff is on… Read More

Go Deep for the Holidays

I was jogging on the mesa behind our house and my thoughts went to the upcoming holidays and my cycles of introversion and extroversion. For me, social gatherings inevitably spur… Read More

DIY: Get what you REALLY want for Christmas

When a physical gift is given, we see that the person who gives it technically loses something and the recipient gains it. So it’s natural that from witnessing the dynamic… Read More

Ask people for help – whether it be in your garden, with your taxes, or finding a great preschool. Learn what gifts and wisdom those around you have and give them opportunities to share.
Be involved. Go to local meetings. Participate. Know your community’s plans for the future – and how you fit into them.
Know the names of people you see often – the grocery cashier, the gas station attendant, the school principal, the guy who takes the same bus as you every day. Allow them to be real people in your life.
Make eye contact with the humans you pass on the street. Be the one who says “Hi!” first.
Protect the green spaces.
Fix something that’s broken – a neighbor’s fence, your niece’s bike, the librarian’s flat tire.
Support local businesses – even if it costs a little more.
Learn about others’ traditions and celebrate together. Look for local festivals to attend, even if they’re for an event you wouldn’t normally observe.
Stick up for someone – a disadvantaged person or population, someone being mistreated or disrespected, or someone who’s unable to stand up for themselves.
Be curious. Attend lectures at the library, senior center, or local university, check out a high school science fair, and – foremost – learn what cool stuff people are up to in your town. What are people building? What are they learning? Who can tell you about the history of this place?

I want everyone to have the experience of being part of a healthy, loving, supportive community. I hope you’ll engage with your community today and be reminded of how nourishing it is. Be well, Peter [post_title] => Community is Medicine [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => community-is-medicine [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2022-06-29 20:03:12 [post_modified_gmt] => 2022-06-29 20:03:12 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://thedragontree.com/?p=8692 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 8953 [post_author] => 5 [post_date] => 2023-02-16 16:48:16 [post_date_gmt] => 2023-02-16 16:48:16 [post_content] => When I first heard the term “take back your power” some decades ago, I thought it pertained mostly to relationships in which one person was overly submissive to the other. Since I didn’t seem to be in that position with anyone, I felt this wasn’t work I needed to do. But in the years since, I’ve come to feel that power sacrifice is something we do all the time, and nearly everyone would benefit from reclaiming their power on a regular basis. As I see it, there are two main categories to power loss (though, as we’ll see, there’s quite a bit of overlap):

1. We give power to a specific person (consciously or unconsciously).
2. We ignore, deny, or fail to recognize our own power and agency (Merriam-Webster: “agency: the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power”).

You may also be interested in:

The Heart of Summer

Community is Medicine

Have You Been Giving Away Your Power?

The Dragontree

christmas

A Freer Way to Experience the Holidays

DIY: A Sustainable Holiday Season

Making Room for Magic in our Giving

DIY: Get what you REALLY want for Christmas

The Dragontree and its Founders have been Featured in