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Thank you

February 2, 2020 in Blog

One month each year I get an easy out on trying to come up with something interesting, thought-provoking, or simply readable for the monthly newsletter. But it’s February again, which means it’s the blue’s birthday, or the 13th anniversary of this community we created in 2007. I’m never sure which one is right, but that doesn’t really matter. Let’s reminisce…

Each February, I think back to the first time I crossed the threshold of what is now blue lotus. The original Glenwood South neighborhood hardly resembles its current self. No The West condos, no Smoky Hollow. No Tiki Bar. No traffic.… Read the rest

2020: The Year of Perfect Vision

January 1, 2020 in Blog

Happy New Year! Or in the words of my friend Jonathan, “Welcome to twenty-twenty: The Year of Perfect Vision.” Wow. Now there’s a worthy resolution.

I hid myself away from the many humans for a couple of hours on December 31 to write away the last of the year. I try to do this annually- a summary of what stood out, what was gained, lost, learned. An inventory of sorts, of the preceding twelve months, that I might wrap up the past and truly start anew. In short, 2019 was not a banner year. Not at all. Perfect vision sounds like perfect timing and I’m all in.… Read the rest

Too much

December 2, 2019 in Blog

’Tis the season of excess. In all the ways. Too much doing, rushing, eating, whirling, spending, running, shopping. Too much of too much. Seems to me it’s the perfect time to get back to basics and revisit the foundations of yoga, which set the stage for a shift of consciousness from chaos toward freedom.

The fifth yama listed in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is aparigraha. Breaking the word into its parts, you have: a- a prefix that changes the meaning of what it precedes to the opposite; pari- “on all sides”; graha- “to grab. To grab on all sides (or in every direction) would be parigraha, and that, in a word, sums up how we tend to move through the holidays.… Read the rest

Lessons

November 4, 2019 in Blog

Me: “How did I get here AGAIN?”
Self: “Bad decisions?”
Me: “Very funny. I’m serious. I’ve already learned this lesson!”
Self: “Um, apparently not.”
Me: “But I did. I’ve already been through this.”
Self: “Let me put it to you this way. If you’d actually learned the lesson, you wouldn’t be here again. But you didn’t, so you are. We thought you’d like another chance!”
Me: “Awesome.”

Does this sound familiar to you? While the specifics of your inner dialogue might be a little different, I have the feeling you know what I’m talking about. One morning you take a look around with that unsettling Groundhog Day feeling.… Read the rest

Life is Short

October 1, 2019 in Blog

Last night marked the second time in just over a month that I spent a night in the ER with a loved one. As a friend who has had to do this more than I have commented, “it’s a weird combination of exhaustion and adrenaline.” Yes, it is. I feel like I was the one who’d been poked and prodded all night long. And while my body was not, my mind and heart surely were. The statement made upon leaving the hospital, “Well, I sure don’t feel like I need to be spending any more time at work!” continues to linger.… Read the rest

To know or not to know

September 2, 2019 in Blog

Whether it came from my family of origin or was part of my soul’s original blueprint, I’ve spent most of my life grappling with being okay with not knowing. The fact that there is so much we don’t know, can’t possibly know, can’t plan or prepare for was just unacceptable to me for a long, long time. In my twenties, I really believed that I did, in fact, know. In my thirties, I found out that there was a whole lot missing from my field of view. By the time I got to my forties, I’d come to terms with the flow of life and her wise, yet unpredictable ways- or so I thought.… Read the rest

What are you carrying?

June 25, 2019 in Blog

Back in April, after about six weeks of deep, aching back pain, I went for an MRI. Unlike most test results I’ve had in my life where I’m told “everything looks fine” I was given an actual diagnosis: a stress fracture at L4. It’s not a big deal. I was in a brace for a month and still have one month more of limited activity yet to go and everything should heal completely. It did provide fodder for a good laugh with a friend– that I’d been going on for such a long time about needing “a break” that I finally got one.… Read the rest

Being in your practice

May 1, 2019 in Blog

I had a great exchange with Kathleen this week about a student complaint. If you haven’t been in class with Kathleen, or have never had the chance to read anything she has written, you might put it on your to-do list. She has a sharp, clear mind and a way with words that I find to be so brilliant, so true, funny and precisely to the point every single time. In our chat, she was talking about being “in your practice” a turn of phrase from another teacher, from another time. To be more accurate, she was actually going on about what it looks like when you’re not in your practice, but that exchange, and the one which inspired it have been with me these past few days in a churning way.… Read the rest

Reclaiming Wonder

April 1, 2019 in Blog, Inspiration

Being a kid was hard for me. Not because my childhood surroundings were especially challenging but because, as far as I can tell, I landed on this planet ready to be an adult. To be a toddler, a child, a teenager was intolerable because I was on a mission to get some things done in this life, and waiting for needs to be met or just playing for the sake of play didn’t fit into my program at all. I wanted to be adulting from Day 1.

From trying to change my own diaper (not kidding) as a baby to climbing onto the kitchen counter to make my own peanut butter sandwich at age two (hence the lifelong nickname “peanut butter”) to attempting a full bedroom makeover with a couple of boxes of RIT dye and some milk crates at age 8 (probably would have gone better in the modern age of HGTV and Queer Eye), I simply didn’t have time to wait.… Read the rest

Yoga Doesn’t Fix Everything

March 1, 2019 in Blog, yoga philosophy

While I occasionally have a plan for what I’ll talk about in the opening meditation for class, most of the time it’s a surprise even to me what comes out. Sometimes, it’s what has been showing up in my own life and practice, what I’ve been reading about or what I am consistently hearing from students. Other times the message seems like it is arriving from the universe as a dharma lesson for me personally as much as it might be for anyone else in the room. Over the many years of teaching, I have come to trust the impulse of what rises whether planned or unplanned, comfortable or not.… Read the rest