Why “Mud Lotus” Health?

The Lotus has long been a symbol of enlightenment and a fully-realized human being.  So the “Lotus” part of mud lotus as a symbol for a wellness practice is a no-brainer.  I encountered it studying Buddhism and other cultures/religions in graduate school, desperately trying to postpone my inevitable encounter with adult life and accountability.  After graduate school, I started working for Lotus Software in Cambridge, MA and loved the place.  Those were the days when hippie-nerds really made their mark in the software and business worlds.  They frightened blue-suit capitalists and gave their companies cool names like Apple and Lotus, evoking happy organic stuff to look at and eat, shifting focus away from silicon chips and intellectual property lawyers and caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived coders.  In any case, Lotus evokes positive memories.

The “mud” part of MudLotusHealth is a little harder to explain, but more important.  I was sitting at the kitchen counter with my 20 year old daughter Maggie, trying to come up with something more interesting than “Lotus Health” or “Lotus Wellness”.  By the way, goggling “Lotus Health” returns as many Goggle hits as “best deal on _______” or “Beyoncé”.  Maggie was hurling pre-Lotus adjectives at me every second – as only a child of the nineties who can manage five Wi-Fi devices simultaneously can do — only a small percentage of which I was able to check on Go Daddy.  Go Daddy is one place to go to discover that every internet domain name you can think of has been taken unless it’s at least 150 characters long and untypable. After ten minutes of this frenzied back and forth to pimp out my Lotus-based brand with a memorable name that wouldn’t get me sued, I stopped to consider my philosophy of wellness (duh… a mindful approach to naming for a mindfulness-based practice).  Here are the basic tenets of the approach:

• Wellness should be common, not extraordinary.  Priceless but not rare.
• Wellness is accessible to ordinary people with ordinary bodies and minds.
• Wellness is a “whole system” endeavor: mind, body, environment, etc.
• Wellness develops, it doesn’t appear.  And it’s a lifelong path.  Vital concept in a “Get a new body in the 30 days!!” culture.
• Finally, wellness should be a light-hearted effort.  With humor and without judgment.

Mud is a common, ordinary substrate.  We only see the beautiful Lotus after it rises to the surface and blossoms, but you cannot separate it from the mud.  And you can’t separate it from the water and the sky.  All elements — the whole system — are required for growth. Mud is nothing special but still miraculous as a foundation for the flower and the roots; the common physical ground and shared experience from which all of us anchor and emerge. And finally – before I go super-somber-serious – mud is funny. One of the best accompaniments to physical humor.  For me, it’s a hedge against an unbalanced approach to my work, though I am serious about my work, if that makes any sense. Maggie loved the name.  And so did Daddy.  And so did Go Daddy, meaning that apparently no-one else loves it or thought of it as a domain name.  Good for me and MudLotusHealth. Of course, that same afternoon I discovered that Goldie Hawn wrote a memoir titled “A Lotus Grows in the Mud”.  And there’s a new short film titled “Mud Lotus”.  And a website named “MudLotusYoga”.  And “MudAndLotus”, and “MudLotusArts”.  And the quote “No mud, no Lotus” is attributed to Thich Nhat Hanh, whose books I eagerly read years ago.  But I’m happy for the company and the name.  And I have a little competition for search engine optimization.  Maggie and Goldie can probably help me with that.