SharedBliss: Interview with Eco-Yogi Milissa Link

The very handsome Dewey with his EarthMama.

Listening to: Some good ol' punk (thanks, Milissa!).

Today's Bliss Formula: No driving a car today! Just my lovely bike, Miss Holly GoLightly. Only one short trip in a car is all it takes to remind me of one of the many, many reasons why I love being car free: not confining my body in that metal box. Ouch.

When I started writing this blog, it was mostly about getting myself writing. Sure, I knew I wanted to have a focus and not just randomly share the tiny minutiae of my life, but I had no idea that the blog would do more for me than get me writing every morning.

I had no idea, for example, that I would constantly be meeting the most amazing people. And that it would just happen spontaneously. Because they maybe like something I write. Or because I find them and just go up (figuratively speaking) and introduce myself.

There's nothing "virtual" about this place, as I've said before and as I continue to learn.

Milissa Link was one of those lucky, serendipitous finds.

I remember thinking that her combination of ecological awareness and yoga was such a natural fit. I remember wondering why more yoga teachers aren't being blatant about this fit in their teachings.

But then, Milissa stands out. Her studio in Minneapolis is named Tree of Life Yoga. And she takes this name seriously. She teaches retreats and workshops to open people's senses to the seasons and to help them reconnect, literally, to the earth.

And she lives this. She is walking her talk. She is a blisschick, through and through.

Describe the PrimaryBliss of your life. How did you come to know that this was your PrimaryBliss?

PrimaryBliss, for me, is communing with trees and plants. Though I need to have an attitude of quiet receptivity to experience the spirit essence of plants, this state is active and choiceful. “Being” becomes a verb, something very purposeful, instead of the default for doing. Since we worship action and material creation in this culture, I’ve gone from letting this be a guilty pleasure to believing it’s a radical act. One that everyone’s hungry for and capable of. So I like to encourage others to play in nature—even if it’s done indoors through yoga postures where the body is consciously supported by the earth or through visualization in meditation or art. Sharing what I find in my own contemplative time in nature is part of the PrimaryBliss too, so there’s a feedback loop that perpetuates the bliss.

What types of choices and sacrifices did you make to be able to craft this bliss-filled life?

I try to keep my lifestyle as simple as possible. I made a decision not to have children so that there’s lots of time for solitude and contemplation. My husband and I got a puppy when I turned forty, feeling that nurturing a dog would fit our lifestyle better than taking on decades of 24/7/365 parenting. Our dog, Dewey, has gotten me out into the woods more than I would have if I’d gotten caught up in career and family. In sun, rain, sleet or snow we walk together at least twice a day. Being a city dweller, I’ve learned to find natural and wild spaces on the banks of the Mississippi River near our home. Dewey and I encountered a coyote walking up a ravine, just miles from the international airport and interstate freeways, on a snowy day last winter when most everyone else in the neighborhood seemed to be indoors cleaning up wrapping paper from the Christmas morning frenzy. It was a real gift for me.

How does your PrimaryBliss radiate out into the rest of your life?

I teach earth-centered yoga and mindfulness meditation and give bodywork sessions through my healing arts practice Tree of Life Yoga. All of my teaching and therapeutic work starts with feeling support from the earth and honors all beings that dwell here. My daily communion with the elements and nature spirits feeds my work and makes it fun, inspiring, and easy for the most part.

Photo by Milissa (or by Dewey -- I'm not sure).

What are some other activities that also give you this sense of bliss? Things that make you lose track of time?

I love writing creative nonfiction. I wrote a memoir, Dog Ma, which I hope to have published in 2009. I’m currently working on an essay collection entitled Biophilia. The title piece is about the trees that befriended me on the small urban island where I lived for seven years. I’m trying to open up more time for writing and want it to become part of my profession. I’d like the bliss that creating with words brings me to have a ripple effect, reminding people that this chance we all get to be here on earth—though full of challenges—is our opportunity to grow in consciousness. We’re all here, I believe, whether we know it or not, to embody spirit. And to enjoy that.

What is your daily or weekly spiritual practice?

Mindful walking with Dewey every morning and afternoon. I’ve moved away from the formal practices of japa (mantra recitation) and meditation that I devoted myself to for the last few decades. I now try to be awake, mindful, and compassionate throughout my day. That time in nature just after I wake—even if it’s walking across the baseball diamond in an urban park—is the foundation. I love to go on retreat whenever I get a chance. My favorite places are on the north shore of Lake Superior and near the Boundary Waters. If I go solo, I practice silence, do walking meditation, and sometimes write.

What music is your bliss?

My husband Brien is a huge music lover, and one of our indulgences is having lots of CDs. While we’re making dinner we shimmy to Al Green, Jimmy Cliff, Carbon Silicon, Orchestra Baobob. Dewey likes to cut in, and I lift him up and get a glimpse of Clio, the big old oak tree that watches over our house, out the window. Bliss!

Name books or authors/poets or people who are your bliss, who influenced your bliss.

There are too many to name. The first book I read on my own at seven was Charlotte’s Web. I cried when Charlotte died, and I felt like my life had begun once I’d become a reader. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time, but that cross-species interaction that I understood as a child, in an imaginative way, has now come into form in the intimacy I share with the trees. Many of the elms and oaks where I live have told me their names. The bond with our nine-year old terrier is also a bit like the one between the little pig and the spider in that first read. (Though Dewey doesn’t talk—yet!) I love Thoreau and Whitman for their celebration of life in the body; their practice of Right Relationship with earth. All of Pema Chodron’s books and Sharon Salzberg’s teachings on meditation have taught me about cultivating self-compassion through the hardships that arise. I get shivers from Mary Oliver’s poems. Also, those of Rumi and Hafiz.

What advice would you give to someone who feels they have not yet discovered their PrimaryBliss?

Take time for yourself. Like a new friend you want to get to know take yourself on play dates. Then notice if you feel any different than you do during your workaday life. What is the juice, the flavor, the spice that’s missing? Practice being you and prepare to be a bliss magnet. Others will feel it and be inspired too. And I’m not saying that this path is always easy and joyful. Part of living a bliss-filled life, I believe, is letting yourself in on the pain, the hurt, the loss and disappointment that come with being a human being. And loving yourself for it. Then look around and realize that everyone who lives suffers and everyone is capable of joy. The trees teach me—with their limbs sawed off to accommodate power lines and nails hammered into them to put up lost dog posters—not to take the hardships so personally. It’s a gift just to be here in any form. Why not make the best of it, find what you love and express that to others?

Do you have a favorite quote you would like to share?

“The miracle is not to walk on thin air or water but to walk on earth.” Thich Nhat Hanh

After this interview, when Milissa's book is published, I'm sure we'll all be some of the first in line to read it.

Milissa's emphasis on the action of being, the "choicefulness" of life, the openness to all experience, and her love of earth and tree and sea and sky, inspires much introspection in me. How about you?