Newsletter: Rosh Chodesh Elul
Hello Friend,
At some point, our bodies will tell us to stop. Our minds will feel blank, scattered, overfilled or empty, and we will need to rest. It’s common advice to listen to our bodies, to notice when our tank is out of gas and find opportunities to pause and recoup. At the 10.27 Healing Partnership we encourage self-insight and agency and making choices informed by a deep relationship with our inner worlds.
Rosh Chodesh Elul provides a new opportunity; a time when we are asked to pause, no matter our current state. It interrupts that constant decision-making process and tells us: “now is the time.”
Rosh Chodesh Elul asks us to pause in preparation. It is more proactive than reactive, and mimics our connection to the seasons, the ebb and flow of the natural world we are a part of, one not fully in our control. September is around the corner, and with it back-to-school, followed by the High Holidays and our yearly October 27th commemoration. It can feel unnatural to pause and reflect before you feel truly out of energy, but what can we learn from it?
For our annual Rosh Chodesh Elul event in partnership with the JCC’s Center for Loving Kindness, we will be studying Torah with Cantor Julie Newman before choosing to either engage in acupuncture or reiki-infused sound bathing, both meditative practices that can calm the mind and open us up to the possibilities and opportunities that lie ahead. Practicing this pause facilitated not just by our own decision-making but also by the Jewish calendar can feel unnatural. But perhaps it is an invitation to treat ourselves like living organisms, encountering waves of movement and rest, rather than a machine we only tend to when it begins to break. I am grateful for the opportunity to listen to the wisdom of Jewish life and the rhythm of life of generations of Jewish people before me this year, and I hope you will join me and the Center for Loving Kindness this Thursday, August 13th, to practice pausing in community together.
In Solidarity,
Maggie Feinstein
Executive Director
10.27 Healing Partnership