October Weekend Wisdom with Dr. Brandon Nappi
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Weekend Wisdom is a weekly sharing from Copper Beech Institute’s founder, Dr. Brandon Nappi. The following are Brandon’s recent reflections, originally posted on social media each Sunday. We hope these simply lessons inspire, rejuvenate, and support you on your inward and outward journey.
10.6.19
5 Things to Do When You Are Overwhelmed
1. Don’t should on yourself.
2. Let go of perfection.
3. Ask for help.
4. Play.
5. Trust that you are enough.
We’ve all been there. Our community at Copper Beech Institute is here to support you in your struggles and celebrate you in your successes. If you’ve been meaning to visit, but haven’t had the chance, we warmly welcome you to spend some time with us and see why people from 25 countries have ventured across the globe to practice mindfulness in our circle of friends. We hope you will find in our community a place of compassion, warmth, and true belonging in both moments of stress and moments of ease.
10.13.19
Expertise is no substitute for embodiment.
Embodiment is the capacity to live wisely in ordinary life. Embodiment is knowing something in our bones so clearly that we can’t un-know it. This deep, inner knowing is beyond right and wrong, good and bad. Embodiment is our capacity to respond to the moment with grace, wisdom, and compassion. Expertise, on the other hand, is conceptual or technical knowledge; it’s having the answers.
While we need a world where highly trained people have expertise, the world will not be healed by experts, but by people whose expertise is lived through compassion and embodiment. The expert searches for the answers and finds comfort in repeatable formulas. The embodied person searches for the questions and knows how to sit with the experience of not-knowing. We outsource our own experience in favor of expert advice. We eagerly await the next book, the next training, the next guru. While conceptual learning is important, information is not transformation. Trust yourself and your spirit. There is no substitute for your own inner wisdom and the lifelong, evolving process of befriending it.
10.20.19
Surrender what’s not essential.
More for the sake of more
is the ideology of cancer.
What is as toxic as cancer in the body is the cancerous ideology in our consumerist culture which attacks the soul of our community. Buy more, look “better,” make more money, buy a bigger house, get more likes on social media, etc. We are bombarded with messages that we are lacking. Eventually, we come to believe that we are not enough as we are. What if less is more? What if we have everything we need to be at peace? What if who we are right now, even in our imperfection, is enough?
As we commemorate breast cancer awareness month, our community at Copper Beech Institute celebrates the immeasurable courage of so many people who have bravely endured through their diagnosis and found ways of thriving amid challenge. We are grateful to be a healing community of mindfulness practice where many survivors have found a refuge and a home. Our friends who have struggled through cancer have shared with us their wisdom learned through living with this disease. Physical illness has the power to teach us is what is essential in life.
There is no substitute for the healing power of a tender embrace, the smile of a stranger, an undeserved act of kindness, the simple presence of a loved one, or the patient listening of a friend. The courage and resilience of many cancer survivors have taught me this wisdom. This month we celebrate them and their brave wisdom gained amid their journey through cancer. Thank you all for your bravery and light!
10.27.19
Mindfulness practice is the courageous act of waking up to your power.
Power has become a negative word recently. At Copper Beech Institute, when we speak of power, we mean spiritual power which is always “power with” not “power over.” We practice mindfulness and meditation to wake up to the reality that we are vastly more powerful that we sometimes allow ourselves to realize. We let unjust power structures, media, habits, our past, other people, or confining beliefs limit our ability to thrive.
When we claim responsibility for our own wellbeing and live into the power that is rightfully ours, we recognize our ability to author our own lives. We practice to remember that this power is available at any moment.
This inner authority when joined with others becomes “power with” and can be a vital force for compassion, justice, and service in the world. When we wake up to our own power, we give others permission to do the same.