Mindful Stargazing

Astronomical Mindfulness is a new book from Christopher De Pree. What can star gazing do for your grounding and meditation? What can looking up to the heavens do for you life on Earth? Your own private observatory is waiting wherever you are. Did you ever notice how the sun sets in a slighlty different place every night? Get in the rhythm of life on this planet. You don't need to know what you see...just look up and know that "no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here".

Transcript

This is Shine On,

The health and happiness show with new episodes every week on how to live well.

Shine On is heard all over the world as a podcast,

But it's heard first on the radio in New York's Hudson Valley.

Hi,

It's Casey.

Say it with me.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Shine On.

I hope things are going well in your world.

I have been immersed in my world in restorative yoga teacher training.

It's a 65-hour course,

So I'm spending all day Saturday,

All day Sunday in the course,

And then four hours a day.

It's like immersing yourself in a different world.

And one of the things Jillian Bransky,

Our instructor,

Keeps repeating is the phrase Our Earth.

In restorative yoga,

We're setting the conditions for people to experience their connection to a greater intelligence or their intuition or divine guidance or their own higher self.

We set the conditions,

Or I shouldn't say we so quickly,

Restorative yoga teachers set the conditions for people to then connect with their own guidance on our Earth.

We're all being held by our Earth,

And we've done some wonderful meditations where in restorative yoga poses,

That's the yoga with all the bolsters.

Well,

Jillian really doesn't like bolsters,

But blankets and props that hold you up and cradle you in particular ways to create this experience where you can breathe freely,

Let your emotions flow freely,

And also be cradled by our Earth.

And when we do these meditations,

You can feel it.

You know,

You can feel how this beautiful Earth of ours is for us.

Does that make sense?

The Earth is on our side.

Louise Hay,

One of her many famous sayings was,

Life loves me,

Right?

Life loves me.

That's a great Louise Hay affirmation.

It's hard after doing some yoga training,

It's hard not to think that the Earth loves us,

After doing some of this restorative teacher training.

So somebody right away went to think about,

You know,

Lightning and tsunamis,

And yes,

There is that.

But perhaps in your world,

You could find a patch of ground,

Even if it's snow and ice covered or this weekend in the northeast mud covered as temperatures go up to the 50s.

Find a patch of Earth that maybe you can connect to.

Maybe it's the view out your kitchen window.

Oh my goodness,

The view out my kitchen window,

These many last mornings with the tree branches encased in glass,

Encased in crystal.

That's what it looked like.

The ice covered branches,

And then the sun would come up and beam on these frosty branches and the sparkling was just divine.

It's also the kind of sunshine we get this time of year in the northeast.

It's the kind that comes right in your window and then clearly illuminates all the places where you need to dust.

Right?

Have you seen that?

Well,

Our first guest today wants us to not only have a relationship with the Earth,

But to have a relationship to the sky.

The book is called Astronomical Mindfulness,

Your cosmic guide to reconnecting with the sun,

Moon,

Stars and planets.

Christopher G.

Dupree is our guest.

He wrote this book with Sarah Scholes.

So many people rush through life and never look up at the planets and the stars.

I look up all the time.

I have no idea what I'm looking at.

You know,

I can get the dippers.

There's the big one.

There's the little one.

I can see if the moon's growing bigger,

Growing smaller.

I do pay attention to that.

But this book invites you to maybe plant yourself in the backyard or by a window on consecutive evenings.

Maybe do it,

You know,

For 30 days in a row.

Maybe do it once a week for a couple of months.

And the book teaches you what you're seeing and how your sky,

Your own personal observatory,

Wherever that is,

How your sky changes and what those changes mean.

When you think about ancient civilizations,

They watched the sky so closely because there was no Netflix,

But they watched the sky so closely.

They were able to chart the seasons.

They were able to understand Earth's relationship to the other things in the sky.

And we can learn things,

Too,

In a very low tech way.

I think about the sailors who sailed by the stars.

Brilliant and brave.

And Chris and Sarah feel there's a part of us that can experience a deep relaxation and total mindfulness by spending time with the beautiful planets overhead and in time will come to recognize the dance they're doing.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean,

In fact,

That's one of the points of the book is that you can make these kinds of observations with with no technology with your eyes,

Your hands and your brain.

What do you feel connecting with the sky does for a person?

I think it does a couple of things.

One of them is the word reconnecting in the subtitle is exactly as you say,

This idea of reconnecting with something that we as humans used to know about and used to be pretty comfortable with and familiar with,

In part because it was so essential,

Right?

If we wanted to know the time of day or the direction we were trudging through the plains or the time of year,

The sky told us these things,

Right?

The sky was our timekeeping device for days and weeks and months and years,

Right?

We have that knowledge.

And so I think that reconnecting with that understanding,

With again,

Coming to be familiar with these patterns allows us to sort of not only slow down a little bit,

But also to realize that we are part of a bigger system,

Right?

I think especially in the past couple of years with all of our need to isolate and zoom and all this kind of stuff,

We have felt more disconnected,

Right,

From one another and from the world around us.

And I think this book hopefully provides an opportunity for all of us to reconnect with the stuff that's there all the time,

Day and night.

So you suggest we go on a little bit of a journey and spend some time looking at the stars each night.

What do you want us to do and how can we do it?

Yeah,

Well,

We tried to be very flexible in the book.

I mean,

You don't have to do anything in the book sort of in order,

Right?

You can kind of hop around and some of the proposals,

Some of the exercises are simpler than others.

And so,

But and really there's nothing that you would have to do every day.

And so it really recommends that you do what fits with your schedule.

And one of the things we start with is saying,

You know,

Your observatory is wherever you are,

Right?

You don't have to have equipment.

You don't have to have a fancy dome or a big telescope.

You really just need yourself and wherever you find yourself,

Right?

If you're in a big city,

If you're in the suburbs or if you're way out in the country,

You can,

All of those locations are okay for this process.

But you know,

There are simple exercises that involve,

For example,

Trying to estimate how big the Earth and the moon are with some Plato.

And then there are things that involve getting outside and sort of looking to the West and seeing where the sun sets.

Tell everybody how they can measure the stars with their hands.

Sure.

Yeah,

There's an illustration in the book that,

I think,

Let's see,

I think it's on page 19,

That shows a hand,

Right?

And basically that if you hold your hand at arm's length,

It gives you a bunch of different ways to measure.

So the width of your pinky,

If you hold your hand out at arm's length,

It is about a degree.

And if you make a fist,

That's about 10 degrees.

And if you make the sort of,

You know,

Hang loose Hawaiian symbol,

That's about 20 degrees on the sky.

So everywhere from one to 10 to 20 degrees.

And that allows you to sort of estimate how far away things are,

Right?

So you could hold your arm up at night and say,

Oh,

The moon looks like it's about 20 degrees away from that bright thing over near the horizon.

That's so cool.

And it really is.

And it's built in.

You don't have to have any equipment.

Yeah,

I love that.

So then if we know the moon is 20 degrees away from that bright star,

What does that actually mean?

What we can do then and what we try to guide the reader through is,

You know,

Noticing some changes are really easy to notice,

Right?

Like we all notice the sun moving across the sky in the course of the day,

Comes up in the east and sets in the west.

And we probably don't need to make too many measurements to notice that.

But you know,

It's good to think about that the reason the sun does that is that the earth is rotating,

Right?

The earth is spinning on its axis and that's what causes the sun to rise and set.

Now a more subtle thing is if you look to the west,

Where does the sun set?

You know,

So if you stand,

Say on your front porch and you're looking to the west,

In the course of the year,

The sun is not going to set in the same place every night.

It's going to move a little bit.

And so you might notice with your pinky finger,

Oh,

The sun is setting about two degrees,

You know,

Further to the north than it did,

You know,

A couple of days ago.

And so those sorts of measurements are,

Was it useful to have,

You know,

Those angular measurements of your hand for.

Astronomical mindfulness Christopher G.

Dupree joins us this morning.

So why is the sun not setting in the same place all the time?

Oh,

Great question.

Well,

It turns out that is because our planet is tilted a little bit on its axis.

And so as a result,

When in the northern hemisphere,

It's wintertime,

The sun is lower in the sky.

And in the summertime,

The sun is higher in the sky.

And so at sunset,

Right,

If our earth were not tilted at all,

You know,

That point where the sun sets would always be at the exact same place.

But because our planet is tilted,

And you know,

One thing that we know is that,

You know,

It's the days are longer in the summer,

And the days are warmer in the summer in the northern hemisphere.

And that's because the sun is higher in the sky.

And when it's higher in the sky,

It's going to set north of west.

And in the winter,

The days are shorter and cooler.

And that's because the sun is further to the south in the sky.

And when it sets,

It's going to set to the south of west.

And so that's what's kind of,

You know,

Fun.

You can,

That's one of the longest projects in the whole book is,

You know,

Over the course of a year,

You can try to notice,

You know,

Maybe once every couple weeks or once a month,

Really look from the same spot and see where the sun sets.

It's amazing.

It goes through this cycle,

North and south,

And it repeats.

And that is a connection,

Right?

That is something that ancient cultures across the whole planet knew about.

And they knew that when that sun reversed and started going in the other direction in midwinter,

Right,

When the days were the shortest,

That was a big moment because it was the promise of summer and fall and fertility and all those things.

I could ask you a million questions,

But I want you to tell us what do you most want listeners to know about your work?

What I hope they know is that,

You know,

That this book will provide them with an opportunity to really start to understand the architecture of the sky day and night,

Right?

Where things are,

Why they are where they are,

And that they really don't need any background knowledge.

They don't need any equipment.

All they need is a willingness to engage and to be present and mindful of what they're doing.

Beautiful.

What are you going to do next?

Sarah and I are talking about working on some other articles together.

I've written a couple of other popular science books.

I wrote the Idiot's Guide to Astronomy a few years back.

So,

You know,

I hope to continue making people aware of astronomy.

I'm a radio astronomer,

Which is often something people don't know a lot about.

So and I work for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

So I hope to raise awareness of what radio astronomy is in the coming years.

That is Christopher G.

Depree,

D-E-P-R-E-E,

Astronomical Mindfulness.

I haven't done this in a long while.

But if you'd like a copy of the book,

Email me from casysplace.

Com and I'd be happy to pick a winner and send that out.

Now I guess we're just going to keep our eye on the sky.

Our next guest is Serena Skye,

S-K-Y-E.

Serena teaches Joyology 101.

It's a class that she's developed based on the four agreements.

Don Miguel Ruiz is aware that Serena is using his book for her class and he's happy that she's spreading his message.

I actually have the four agreements printed next to my microphone in the studio.

Number one,

Be impeccable with your word.

Number two,

Don't take anything personally.

Number three,

Don't make assumptions.

And number four,

Always do your best.

It's a handy guide and Serena and her students dive deep into it.

But there was a time when Serena was not in alignment with her best self.

A rift with her child she believes affected her so deeply,

It took away her health.

I was into teaching my class for at least a few years.

And let's just say I was going through my own life challenges.

One of those challenges involved one of my children who had made a decision for his life that I deemed the equivalent of him flying into a brick wall.

And for a year,

I mourned a child that was very much alive.

I came out of the rabbit hole just in time to realize that I was down there and did the work,

Practiced what I preach.

It was another life lesson.

And several months into bringing myself back to center,

I woke up one day and ended up with a spinal cord stroke.

There I sat on my bathroom floor,

One foot hyperextended and twisted behind me.

Not for one moment was I afraid.

I literally shot past fear to my soul and realized how I ended up down on the floor like this.

And I actually kind of felt like I won the lottery because I realized it was just the mourning of a child that was alive and walking around a mucus river.

I cried.

I cried all the time.

And I realized I know how I got into this and isn't it just so freaking exciting that I know how to get myself out of it.

And I did the work.

And that was a little over three years ago.

I practiced what I preached.

I did a lot of meditation.

I've taught an acupuncturist and I've worked on going inward into healing my body.

So are you saying that you feel the emotional pain you were carrying manifested physically in a spinal stroke?

One hundred and fifty percent.

Yes.

All right.

Serena Sky of Joyology 101.

Let's just say hey to all the people who are maybe struggling with a health issue.

And what is it I want to say?

And let's not make them feel they caused it.

How's that?

Oh yes.

Well first of all a woman who was helping me with some of the therapy when I told her how I felt you know about understanding how I ended up in that position.

The first thing she said to me was oh no don't accuse yourself of that.

That involves guilt.

And the first thing I said to her was I don't feel guilty.

I recognize my responsibility for my thoughts and my actions.

And so you know one of the reasons I started teaching the class was that you know a lot of my clients they didn't know how they felt.

They just kind of go on autopilot.

You know they make choices sometimes that are not you know for their own best self.

For me it was it's not about feeling guilty.

We're not taught most of us you know from the beginning how to find out what makes us happy and what feels good to us.

You know we usually you know very often some of us mask those things or we just are not paying attention.

You know life is fast and sometimes it's difficult and sometimes we weren't given the best examples and that's not even for the people who might not have been the best examples you know to put blame there either.

We just have to remember that we're responsible for us.

It's not about blaming ourselves if something happens that it might we might deem not good.

It's about okay now what do I do about this.

That was the choice that I made.

It's all about choices and I and I made the choice that you know I realized how this came about.

It's a lesson I needed to learn and it made me better for it.

It reminded me how powerful we are and that includes the power of our unhappy thoughts.

They're equally as powerful.

That's why I remind people you know that I teach that we will have come around eventually you know some of the things we think about with intensity and isn't it great to know it's so grand to know that we can redirect ourselves if those thoughts aren't really good ones and replace them with ones that are and that it's just about reminding people of their power and their greatness because most of us have forgotten that.

And I just want to touch back again on what you said about how the spiritual people who have a life philosophy and a way of being in the world that's very healthy sometimes all of that can go right out the window when it involves your kids or your spouse.

All these closest to our heart.

Serena Skye we're finding out a little bit of her story and the story of the class she teaches called Joyology 101.

Can you please tell people who are struggling with difficult negative thoughts and how they can start to transform those?

One simple thing that they can do when they start to notice that they are feeling out of source is take a moment to just stop wherever you are.

If it's a car pull over place your hands over your heart and close your eyes and breathe and while you're breathing breathe into your heart area and find a feeling of something that's made you feel so happy at any point in your life or somebody whether it be a pet or an event that happened to you and just spend a couple of minutes hanging onto that feeling and breathing through it.

When we go inside like that we start to get in touch with who we really are.

You know the heart is the first thing that forms in the body not the brain.

The brain gives us our ego.

The heart has all of the answers and so that's a simple thing that people can do that are struggling.

Come back into who they really are and remember their connection to the divine.

That's Serena Skye.

She teaches Joyology 101.

She has a class starting up soon in New Jersey.

She's doing well,

Her relationship with her child is doing better and she found her way back to health and happiness.

Hi it's Casey.

Thanks for listening to shine on the health and happiness show.

I want to remind you that this weekend Saturday night we have a sound healing with lots of free chocolate that's happening in Verplanck.

Casysplace.

Com has more and the final weekend of this month will be at the Marian Dell Retreat Center for our in-person retreat.

We are so grateful.

COVID numbers are coming down.

We'll continue to stay safe but we are going to gather together for the gather love give love in-person retreat.

We'll be walking the labyrinth and watching the sunsets on the Hudson River.

We've got Tara Greenway who's going to do some limiting belief busting exercises with us.

We have Alexa Wolkoff who will do some gentle yoga.

We have the Rosemary Boyle Lasher sound healing with her crystal harp from Rose Healing Center and we have Mary Ellen O'Brien the life coach who will help us connect to our true essence.

So that's the final weekend this month our in-person retreat at the Marian Dell Retreat Center.

Please please come bring your friends.

All right my sweet Valentine's so I found some research on dark chocolate and I just have to share it with you.

You may already be on board with dark chocolate but wait until you hear this.

It has been written the research says dark chocolate helps your brain.

It improves cognition,

Prevents memory loss and boosts your mood.

Now we're talking about 1.

5 ounces.

Sure go ahead every day with that.

Seventy percent cacao organic dark chocolate helps the synaptic connections in your brain.

The Harvard T.

H.

Chan School of Public Health lists the vitamins and minerals of dark chocolate.

Copper iron,

Magnesium,

Manganese to name a few good for your skin helps support your production of collagen.

It's counterintuitive that eating dark chocolate every day can help prevent diabetes but studies have shown healthy amounts of dark chocolate rich in cacao actually can improve how the body metabolizes glucose.

You have to have a good diet in combination with that.

Dark chocolate may also help prevent heart disease and lower the risk of stroke.

There's something in the cacao called flavonoids and they help produce nitric oxide which causes blood vessels to relax and blood pressure to lower.

So just 1.

5 ounces,

70 percent or higher.

Enjoy your dark chocolate this weekend and beyond Valentine's.

And for anybody looking for a Valentine,

May I just remind you that you are surrounded by love in this community that we create every week with Shine on the Health and Happiness show.

It connects us.

Whenever you hear it,

It connects us all in a community of love and if you need a little more of that you can join the Circle of Women book and also the Circle of Prayer.

Casey's Place dot com has more I think it should.

I'll speak to the webmaster.

She's busy with her yoga teacher training this week and I thought for the day comes from author Sylvester McNutt the third who wrote loving yourself properly.

Sylvester said fall in love with taking care of yourself.

Fall in love with the path of deep healing.

Fall in love with becoming the best version of yourself but with patience,

Compassion and respect to your own journey.

Shine on.

You've been listening to Shine on the Health and Happiness show with new episodes every week.

It's your time to shine on.

Reviews

I loved so much about this episode! I was a stargazer as a kid and this brought back sweet memories 💜