On Sunday morning we lingered a little too long over our breakfasts at the bagel place and were late getting to church.  I should clarify what I mean by late.  We didn’t arrive after the service started or anything.  Rather we got there 15 minutes instead of 20-25 minutes in advance of the service.  As we walked into the chapel, my daughter turned to me and whined, “Someone is sitting in “our” pew!”  Not only that, but all the pews in proximity to where we usually sit were full too.  As we made our way to open seats, it wasn’t just my daughter who was feeling out of sorts.  I was surprised at how displaced I felt at having to sit somewhere else in church.  I hadn’t realized how comfortable and attached I’d gotten to “our” pew.

 

As I sat waiting for the service to begin, I had a flashback to a yoga class I took years and years ago.  I’d arrived at class early  in order to get “my” spot in the room.  (Are you already seeing the parallels here?)  It wasn’t always “my” spot.  When I first began attending the class, I automatically put my mat down as far from my teacher as I could.  As I became a “regular,” however, I found I liked to be up front closer to her.  Not only had I developed a liking for the front of the studio, but I found I liked to face the mirrors rather than have my back to them.  (The opportunity to stare at my rump in downward facing dog not being something I relished.)  Finally, as I started working on headstand, I found I liked to be near the wall.  All these prerequisites limited my comfort zone to exactly one spot in the studio – thus, “my” spot was born and remained “mine” even when I no longer needed the wall to go upside down.

 

That particular Monday morning my teacher walked into the studio, plopped down on her mat and took a look around.  She asked if we’d noticed that we all seemed to have special spots in the room.  (I was a little surprised and a lot relieved that it wasn’t just me!)  She said that even when attending yoga classes, where we’re learning to be flexible and to have open minds, it is human nature to be tempted to create habits and get into ruts.  Yoga is designed to be a tool to help us develop awareness of these habits.  Some of the habits will be good ones and we’ll stick with them.  Others will be limiting and we’ll decide to part ways with them.  One way we can assess the benefits and drawbacks of a habit is to force ourselves out of it every once in a while.  With that in mind, she said, “Please pick up your mat and move to the other side of the studio.  Once you get there, head to the other end of the row.  Practice there today.”

 

As I bent down to gather my mat, jacket and socks, I had a knot in my stomach way out of proportion to what was being asked of me.  I think I actually groaned.  I know, as I switched places, that I decided there was no way I could have a good practice “way down there.”  As we chanted to open the class, I was quite unsettled.  As we moved through the first half of our Sun Salutations, I allowed my new “view” of myself to distract me and keep me feeling out of sorts.  But, somewhere along the way, my breath took over.  I began to settle into my own rhythm and my own practice.  My mind’s eye turned inward and I ceased to be distracted by the mirror behind me.  What I remember the most was rolling over after Savasana at the end of class and being completely discombobulated when I opened my eyes to find I wasn’t in “my” spot.

 

My teacher taught me a powerful lesson about habits and attachments that morning.  Her exercise illustrated how strong even the most inconsequential of attachments can be.  The fact that I had become so attached to that dusty corner of the yoga studio was pretty surprising to me.  It made me wonder how many similar attachments I had and how they might be supporting or limiting me.  As far as “my” spot in the studio, it did support me in many ways.  Literally, it provided me the support of the wall so I could continue to develop my headstand.  Less literally, it gave me a deeper sense of investment in the class, a sense of homecoming each time I unrolled my mat in that studio, an automatic sense of peace and calm.

 

But, when my teacher asked me to move, I realized that the support I received from “my” spot did not come without a price.  First, there were the extra minutes I spent sitting in the studio before class because of my need to get there early to get “my” spot.  And there was the almost (but not quite) imperceptible stress and worry I felt when I thought about someone else getting there before me.

 

So, you’re probably wondering what happened next, right?  Did I become a yoga gypsy, moving my mat from spot to spot around the studio each week?   While there is a little part of me that would love to be able say that’s what I did, it isn’t.  I was back in “my” spot the very next week.  But, I was back with more awareness.  I was back because I liked that spot, because it felt more comfortable than the other spots in the studio.  And there was more.  I was back in “my” spot without a worry about what would happen if I couldn’t practice there.  I wasn’t bothered (as much) by the idea that someone else might unroll their mat there before me.  My teacher’s lesson had left me confident that the yoga would be good no matter where my mat was.  And that was a relief.

 

Similarly, there is no doubt in my mind that we will return to “our” pew next Sunday.  While the service was great and we received all the gifts of worship, fellowship and communion despite our forced relocation, I discovered that, just as I like “my” spot in the studio, I really do like sitting in “our” pew.  I like the fact that my son chose it for us.  I like that I have a great view of the priest.  I like that we are invited up to communion early on, so I have a nice chunk of time afterwards to pray and listen to the music.  “Our” pew feels comfortable and right on many levels.  Not the least of which is that I enjoy turning around at the “peace” to greet our neighbors who are always in “their” spot right behind us.  Perhaps this particular habit is human nature after all!

 

Namaste,

Amy

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My husband and I are preparing for a number of major “firsts” -- we are headed to Israel in a few days.  This will be the first time either of us has been so far from home.  This will be the first time we’ve shared a pure sight-seeing vacation (we tend to be ski or beach folks).  And, this will be the first time we’ve left our kids for more than three days.

 

To say we are excited would be  the understatement of the year.  Our coming adventure has been front-and-center in our minds for weeks now.  We’ve been reading books and magazines about Israel and the three faiths that call it home.  We’ve been over and over many lists – what we need to do before we leave, what we need to buy, what we need to pack.  And we’ve been making the list to end all lists as we’ve tried to write down everything that needs to happen around here while we’re gone in an effort to make life as smooth as possible for my mom and dad while they care for our three children, two dogs and one cat.

 

(Have you ever tried to make a list of your life?  Where you go, how you get there, what you do each hour of the day?  Does it surprise you at all to learn that our list is starting to look more like a book than a list?)

 

Yesterday I came in from practicing yoga and immediately began glancing through one of our lists.  I realized I had forgotten to include next week’s trash pick-up on the master schedule.  I noted that I needed to make sure my son had enough of each of his medicines to get through our ten day absence.  I wondered for the millionth time what the weather was going to be like 6,000 miles away a week in the future.  In short, I (again) began focusing the powers of my mind and my body on preparing for the future.

 

What a re-entry from my yoga practice!  I’d just carved out a wonderful, nurturing hour for myself in the midst of a very busy day.  I’d spent that hour simply moving and breathing.  While I practiced, I was working to keep my mind keenly focused in the present moment -- on my breath and the movements of my body.  During savasana, while my body rested and absorbed the physical gifts of the yoga, my mind stilled and my spirit opened.  As I rolled up to sit on my mat, I felt refreshed, energized and re-focused.  I was ready to embark on my day with a lighter heart, a spring in my step and a can-do attitude.

 

Perhaps it was the immediate way my mind dashed from “Now” to “Then” in the moments just after my practice that caught my attention.  When I stopped to think about it, a disproportionate amount of our time in the last few weeks has been focused on “the trip.”  I began to wonder about all of our excitement and preparation.  I wondered how both our happy anticipation and all the requisite planning fit with yoga’s teaching that a life well-lived is lived in the moment.

 

And then it came to me.  Planning for this trip really isn’t all that different from some of my other favorite activities.  For instance, my husband and I love to host dinner parties.  The week leading up to a dinner party is happily filled with menu discussions, shopping, and thinking about how to set the table.  While the party itself is great, I wouldn’t have them as often as I do if I didn’t enjoy the process.  And, for me, one of the best parts of waiting for our babies to arrive was planning and decorating a nursery that wouldn’t be lived in for months.  While I don’t plan on painting any future nurseries, each fall I continue to get the same kind of pleasure by spending a few hours planning and planting dozens of bulbs that won’t bloom until spring.

 

Though I didn’t see it at first, my point is simple.  Planning and preparing can be filled with as many moments to enjoy as the actual event.  And this is what yoga is teaching us --  to fully invest ourselves in our work at hand each moment.  The  work we’re doing could bear immediate fruit – a neatly folded stack of laundry, say.  Or, like the work I’m doing right now to prepare for our coming vacation, it could bear fruit in the future.  Either way, when we stay in the moment, the work we do is not only better.  It is more enjoyable and more satisfying.

 

As I look back on our last few weeks, I can honestly say that the preparations for our trip have added to our anticipation.  Aren’t we lucky?  Rather than a whirlwind 10-day vacation exploring the Holy Land, we began enjoying our adventure as soon as we started planning and preparing for it!

 

Namaste,

Amy

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Feeling frankly baffled, I turned to my students, asking them “What do you think of yoga as an Olympic sport?”

 

The first response I got was a burst of laughter.  “Really?” one woman asked incredulously, “Yoga as a sport?”  Another replied, “Not just a sport.  A sport to be judged.”  Over the next few days, I asked and asked.  The only person I spoke to this week who thought this was a good idea was a 7-year-old boy in my elementary school yoga club.  (I’m pretty sure his enthusiasm is rooted in the fact that he thinks he has a pretty good shot at medaling in yoga one day.)

Before this week, the idea of yoga as a sport was vaguely troublesome for me.  In order to enter into the debate intelligently, I decided I needed to figure out exactly why I don’t consider yoga a sport.  A “sport” is defined on Wikipedia as “an organized, competitive, and skillful physical activity requiring commitment and fair play.  It is governed by a set of rules or customs.  In a sport the key factors are the physical capabilities and skills of the competitor when determining the outcome (winning or losing). … Physical events such as scoring goals or crossing a line first often define the result of a sport.  However the degree of skill in some sports such as diving, dressage and figure skating is judged according to well-defined criteria.  This is in contrast with other judged activities such as beauty pageants and body-building shows, where skill does not have to be shown and the criteria are not as well defined.”

Using that definition, I think we’re safe in saying that the physical practice of yoga, while very, very good for the body, and while requiring some skillful physical activity, is not a sport.  First and foremost, yoga is just not competitive.  In any given class that I teach one person in a seated forward bend might be resting their torso on their thighs while their neighbor is sitting almost upright.  Although it might appear that one is somehow ahead of the other, both are receiving every gift of the stretch.  Everyone wins when they adopt this practice. There is absolutely no losing in yoga.

Like a sport, the physical practice of yoga does require commitment.  In order to deepen our practices, we must commit time and energy to them.  It’s the reason we make this commitment that differs from sports.  In sports, we practice to improve, to get better.  We practice to improve our chances of winning!  In yoga, we dedicate ourselves to the practice in order to  receive its life-changing gifts.  Sure!  Some of these gifts are physical – leaner, stronger and more flexible bodies.  Often these are the reasons people first come to the practice.  But more of yoga’s gifts are not physical – increased powers of concentration, improved emotional equilibrium, broader perspectives, gentler attitudes, more expansive minds.  These are the real reasons people stick with the practice.  And it would be nearly impossible for a judge to score us in these areas.

It’s the idea of practicing yoga postures in front of Olympic judges that really sends me into a tizzy.  It simply turns the whole practice on its ear.  To me, thinking we can judge someone’s yoga practice by watching them perform asana on a stage is laughable.  Let’s go back to the two students on neighboring yoga mats that I described above.  It is perfectly plausible that the uber-flexible yogi on the first mat is daydreaming while flopped forward over her legs rather than using her physical effort to help hold her attention and awareness in the moment.  She could be so naturally flexible that she is not engaging her bandhas to keep her pelvis from rolling back or to add length to her forward bend.  She could be so distracted by her less flexible neighbor that she’s holding her breath rather than consciously extending her stretch with every inhale and moving deeper into it with each exhale.  In other words, she may be stretching (and look darn good doing so!), but she’s not practicing yoga.  Yet a judge might give her a perfect “10” for the way her forward bend appears.

Meanwhile, that same judge could give her neighbor who is sitting almost upright in his forward bend a much lower score for not getting his torso to touch his thighs.  However, his awareness of his hamstrings could indicate that he is keenly aware of his body.  His bandhas could be fully engaged, supporting his pelvis in an upright position and allowing him to create great openness through his torso as he extends his chest away from his hips.  He could be fully focused on his experience as he stretches.  He could be working intently with his breath to ever-so-subtly coax his hamstrings to open to allow him to deepen his forward bend.  Despite the fact that he is in an early modification of the posture rather than its full expression, he is practicing yoga in every sense of the word.

And this is just what we glimpse when we watch these two students’ practice on their mats!  There is no way that watching them stretch will give us a clear idea of how yoga’s non-physical gifts have affected the way they’re living.  We have no idea how they’ve changed and grown.  We have no idea whether they’re able to stretch their yoga off their mats and into their relationships, their responsibilities, or their recreation.  And that’s the real rub.  Yoga is a practice designed to enable us to live lives that are more fulfilling, that are more connected to the people and world around us, and that are more grounded in faith or spirituality than in meeting our own desires and needs.  To define yoga as a practice for moving, stretching and even contorting on a sticky mat is to eviscerate the practice.

In the (perfectly tongue in cheek) blog on YogaJournal.comthat got me stirred up enough to write about this to you all, the author offers a suggestion of how to include yoga in the Olympics: “Event: Which country can best serve the poor and suffering of ANOTHER country.  Scoring: Performance based on efficiency, benevolence, sacrifice, spiritedness, and selflessness.”  I think he’s on the right track.  What do you think?

Namaste,

Amy

 

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About two weeks ago we adopted a retired racing greyhound named Rocket.  He’s a big (REALLY big), beautiful boy with tortoise-shell coloring and soft, brown eyes.  He’s sweet natured and loving.  Most notable is that he is almost eerily calm, which makes it even harder to comprehend the shocking changes he’s just undergone.  You see, he spent the first three years of his life either in a racing kennel or zipping around a track.  Until he came home with us, he had never been in a house, never slept on a dog bed, never tip-toed through three feet of snow and never had a relationship with a person.  I imagine that he feels as if he’s been dropped on another planet.   While he’s still the same dog, absolutely nothing else in his life is the same.  Literally every single thing he sees, hears, smells and does is brand new to him.  And he’s taking it all in stride.  Slow, steady, thoughtful stride.

 

These two weeks with Rocket have had an effect on me greater than the expected “Holy Moley, there’s another creature sharing our house!”  Watching Rocket take in his new world has heightened my awareness of all the sights, smells and sounds that typically wash over me without notice.  As I move the laundry from the washer to the drier, he’s right there peering into the machine and sniffing the wet clothes.  As I give him a moment to check it out, I, too, notice how cold the wet clothes are and how nice the detergent smells.  When we headed out to go “potty” during last week’s big snow storm, he froze in shock in the doorway.  As I paused to reassure him that everything was still there -- just snow-covered, I had a moment to consider the breathtaking transformation of the world outside.  And, when I found myself being drawn into a heated “negotiation” with my middle child, it was Rocket slinking off to another room at the sound of our raised voices that woke me to how frightening we sounded to him.  The time it took me to go after the dog served as a little “time out.”  I returned feeling cooler and better able to stay that way as I finished my discussion with my daughter.

 

Seeing the world through Rocket’s eyes has reaffirmed some of the most powerful life skills that yoga offers us.  Yoga helps us develop a keen awareness, sharp powers of observation and an ability to stay a little separate from the events happening to us and around us.  Our yoga mats are safe, contained little laboratories where we practice these skills.  On our mats, what we have to pay attention to is much more limited than it is in the rest of our life.  On our mats, we’re simply working with our breath, our body and our mind.  We work to stay aware of the sensations of the breath – how does the breath itself feel, how does it change the body, how does observing the breath change our state of mind?  We work to observe the body – how does a subtle shift in the rooting of our feet change an entire standing posture, how can we move to deepen a stretch, how can we release to settle into a challenging asana?  We work to stay a little separate from the physical practice that we’re moving through – we are developing skill at being an observer of ourselves, we are learning how to respond consciously and thoughtfully to a challenge rather than just reacting, we are affirming that we are more than our bodies and our breath.

 

Living with Rocket has taken these skills to a new depth in my life off my mat.  As I move through my daily life, more often than not, I am doing things I’ve done hundreds of times.  Rocket has helped me remove the blinders of “auto-pilot.”  Having my new dog observe me so closely and with such open curiosity, has awakened my role as observer of myself.  Instead of daydreaming or multitasking, Rocket’s fascination with my activities has gotten me more fully involved in whatever it is I’m doing.  Rocket has helped me notice nuances and details that could easily have escaped my awareness.  This is a frame of mind I’m familiar with.  I work with it on my mat all the time.  When I practice asana, I am (more often than not) moving into and out of postures that are very familiar to me.  On my mat, the sensations of my body often serve to remove the blinders of “auto-pilot.”  Some days, backbends feel awesome.  Some days, not so much.  Some days I can palm the floor with no problem.  Other days, I might as well have decided to reach up and touch the moon.  My body is different every single time I practice, and the awareness I need to ascertain what’s going on each time I come to my mat keeps me fully involved.  Rocket is helping to bring yoga’s heightened awareness and mental presence off my mat.

 

I suppose as Rocket gets used to his new world, he too might develop auto-pilot and blinders.  But maybe, because he spent years living a harder life, he won’t take all the comfort and love that now fill his days for granted.  Whatever the case, I hope it’s a long time before the heightened awareness that he’s given me fades.  Even the simplest activities that fill my days are richer when I’m fully involved and paying attention.  Who knew that adopting a dog could be such a powerful tool to bring this yoga way of life off my mat and into my days?!

 

Namaste,

Amy

 

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Good Morning,

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not get bent out of shape. - Unknown

 

It started out as a typical Tuesday morning.  There was no indication as I roused the children, fed the pets, and got three breakfasts ready that this morning was going to be anything out of the ordinary.  In fact, as I was making my way through my morning routine, I even thought to myself that I really needed things to go smoothly because I was going to need every minute of the day to work my way through the staggering list of things I had to do.  Famous last words.

 

Right about the time that thought crossed my mind, the phone rang.  It was our cleaning lady calling to see if she could come a day early because of the looming snowstorm.  “Sure,” I said.  As I hung up I realized I needed to get the piles of laundry that were teetering on the mudroom counter put away before she arrived.  I took a deep breath, upped my speed a notch and began schlepping clothes upstairs.  Probably because I was rushing, as I set my husband’s pile on his shelf in the closet, I knocked his “junk” bowl to the ground spilling gazillions of coins, golf tees, dry cleaning tags, marbles (I have no idea what the man is doing with marbles in our closet), receipts, paperclips and pens all over the floor.  I uttered a choice word or two, took my second deep breath of the morning, called out a ten minute ETD warning to the kids, and began to pick up the gigantic mess.

 

Now, I’ve been around the block enough times to know that unless I’m standing over the kids doing a minute-by-minute countdown, ten minutes can seem like an eternity to them.  Why I thought this morning would be any different, I don’t know.  Suffice it to say, as I dashed downstairs to shepherd the two oldest to the car, neither was remotely ready to go.  I stopped dashing, took deep breath number three, and began issuing instructions.  Ten minutes later, and half-way to my son’s school, my daughter took a deep breath of her own, and said in a tiny voice, “Mommy, my clarinet is on the counter.”

 

Cue deep breath number four.  Thanks to that breath, I managed to not say a word (no small feat for me, let me tell you) but just continued driving to the middle school.  My son offered to walk across the street so I wouldn’t have to navigate the always slow-as-molasses drop-off line, and my daughter and I headed home.  When she got back in the car with the clarinet, she announced, “I hate Tuesdays.  I just have too much to do.”  I should have taken breath number five here, but I’m not perfect.  Instead, I suggested (in a chilly voice) that perhaps it was I who had too much to do on Tuesday mornings and did she think it was too much to ask that she actually bring the instrument she was going to be playing with her.  Let’s just say, our ride to her school was a quiet one.

 

As I walked back into the house to get my little one ready for the bus stop, the cleaning lady (who’d arrived in my absence) popped up from the basement to ask if I had any paper towels.  You guessed it.  Deep breath number five.  I looked at my daughter, said, “Want to take a trip to the grocery store before school?”, and got back in the car.  We zipped through the store, successfully checked ourselves out, dropped the paper towels off at home and made it to school with about 30 seconds to spare.  I dragged myself back into the house feeling like I’d just run a marathon.

 

Why have I shared all this with you?  Well, partially, because it was a particularly comical morning and I hope you’ll get a chuckle out of it.  But, more seriously, because, if we’re realistic, as messy as this particular Tuesday morning was, it really is more the norm than those rare Tuesday mornings that actually run like a well-oiled machine.   That’s life, right?  We can plan and practice and prepare all we want, but life is going to unfold as it will.  And more often than not, it unfolds in ways we never expected - requiring us to stretch and bend in new and different (and sometimes difficult) ways.  Our job is to take deep breath after deep breath and to do our best to be flexible.

 

Once upon a time, long before I first stepped on my yoga mat, a morning like this could completely derail me.  I’d lose my temper.  I’d run off at the mouth at my kids and spend the better part of my day regretting it.  My grip on my original plans for the way the day was supposed to unfold was so tight and so rigid that it was nearly impossible for me to let go and come up with “Plan B” (let alone C, D and E!).  I wasn’t able to be flexible.  Rather than bending and stretching to meet the surprises of life, I was constantly getting bent out of shape.

 

Not only do we learn the beneficial, nurturing power of a deep breath on our yoga mats, but we also learn to be flexible.  (And, no, I’m talking about those pesky hamstrings this time.)  Those of us who begin our yoga journeys in led classes often learn this lesson right away.  We may walk into the studio hoping for lots of backbends, only to have our teacher lead us through a class filled with balances and forward bends.  It doesn’t take too many of those classes for us to start taking that famous line used by preschool teachers around the world to heart: “You get what you get and you don’t get upset.”  Instead of getting bent out of shape, we begin to gratefully receive whatever our teacher offers us each day.

 

Flexibility is not a lesson denied to those of us with home practices.  We may wake up counting on a full hour on our mat before work, only to get a call that our first meeting of the day has been moved to an earlier time.  Instead of that luxurious hour of yoga, we find ourselves zipping through three sun salutations and a quick seated meditation.  While we know we ought to feel fortunate to have been able to practice at all (moving and breathing is powerfully centering no matter how little time we spend doing it), it can take real effort not to feel gypped.

 

Each time something like this happens – on or off the mat - we are given the chance to practice flexibility.  Sometimes, it’s going to work.  We’ll emerge on the other side of life’s most recent surprise with a smile on our face ready to embark on Plan B, C or even D.  Sometimes, we’re going to get bent out of shape.  The good news is that those of us who do yoga get a little more practice at being flexible.  And, while practice doesn’t always make perfect, it really does help.

 

Namaste,

Amy

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Good morning –.

 

The other day I woke up spinning furiously.  When will I write?  What if I don’t get the laundry done before my morning class?  When will I get to the store?  Will I get through my list despite having two long meetings this afternoon?  Sometimes I have days like this when I can’t quite catch up before I’ve even begun - days when I always feel a step or two behind.  I’m sure you’ve been here before, too.  (Right??)  When our pile of work seems insurmountable and time seems too short, what do we do?

 

This is going to sound crazy.  I know you’re expecting me to provide some type of answer from the yoga mat, but I found my answer in grocery bags.  That’s right.  I found my answer in the enormous pile of full grocery bags stacked on my kitchen floor desperately needing to be unpacked.  I found my answer in the mountain of food needing to be put away immediately so the fruits of my labors don’t spoil or get eaten by my exuberant and always hungry dog.

 

You see, by the time that pile of grocery bags arrives on my kitchen floor, I’m exhausted and feeling frayed from an hour or so of hard labor in the supermarket.  Even before I left for the store, I’d planned our meals for the week and made my list (maybe even checking it twice, like Santa!).  I’d braved the crazy drivers in the parking lot.  Probably, for the fourth trip in a row, I’d forgotten my old grocery bags to recycle, so now I know I’m going to spend another week staring at that heap of plastic valiantly resisting the urge to just pitch them because of the vivid image of the bags sitting in a landfill for the next 800 years.  Maybe the store had sold out of a key ingredient.  Maybe I had to go through a roller coaster of emotion -- the joy of finding myself in a check-out line with a bagger quickly followed by the pain of seeing my cartons of chicken broth hurled onto my pears.  I could go on and on (in fact, I think I already have), but you get my point – I’m already tired and there is a huge pile of food on my floor where it cannot simply stay.

 

What now?

 

First, as any self-respecting yogi would, I inhale deeply.  Second, I exhale … or sigh, you choose.  Then, I recite my post-grocery-store-mantra:  “Just start.  One bag at a time. One item at a time.  Just start.”  And I do.  It’s not easy.  I can feel my will-power flexing and straining like my upper arms in low-push up.  I pick up the first bag, place it on the counter and remove the food.  If I’m really “on my game,” I may look at the food (the fruit of my labor) and be happy I have it.  If I’m not, I don’t.  I just put it where it goes.  If I’m having a good day, I may celebrate the fact that my cabinets are so organized.  If I’m not, I just shove the mustard in and move on.  Either way, on my game or off, the work is being done.  Either way, good day or bad, I can see a little progress.  And even the littlest progress is something to celebrate on any day!

 

Item by item, bag by bag, I go.  There’s a rhythm to it, a peaceful sort of feeling.  I’m present (so the ice cream doesn’t get stashed in the cupboard and the toothpaste doesn’t get frozen), but my body knows basically what to do and my mind is quiet.  I settle into my task.  After all, it has to be done and I’m the one to do it.  I breathe and I do.  I bend down to get the next bag.  I stretch as I reach up to the top shelf to put the peanut butter away.  I bend down again --- and realize I’m done.  My work is complete.  I’m surprised at how good it feels and I sit down to take a well deserved rest.

 

While I’m sitting, resting, it slowly dawns on me that (albeit in a strange way) I’ve just practiced yoga.  I couldn’t have been farther off my mat, but that’s exactly what I was doing.  If I can practice yoga while unloading groceries, it surely follows that we can practice yoga anywhere and anytime.  With that, I smile and rest a little more deeply.

 

Namaste,

Amy

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Note:  This “Yoga Thoughts” was originally published in November, 2006.  It felt perfectly descriptive of my week this week so I thought I’d share it again.

 

Those of you who have been reading my essays for a while know that I often find lessons in the challenges of yoga.  Perhaps this is because, as a long-legged, not-naturally-so-limber, tall gal,  it took a really long time for my body to open to yoga’s postures.  Perhaps this is because every twist and turn and bump in my long journey toward figuring out this crazy, complicated practice has been filled with so many riches.  Perhaps this is because one of my heartfelt beliefs when teaching yoga is “Heck, if I can figure this out, then you can absolutely figure this out too!”  In a nutshell, I’ve faced many challenges on my yoga mat.  And, I can honestly say that I’ve learned something (eventually) from all of them.

 

But on Sunday afternoon I had the practice of all practices.  I mean, I was a human rubber-band!  My body felt strong and supple.  I sailed through ten Sun Salutations like they were nothing.  My wonderful feelings of strength and flexibility were actually overshadowed by the richness of my breath.  It was deep, smooth and sustaining.  It was synchronized perfectly with the movements of my body.  And it continued like that through the entire 90-minute Ashtanga primary series.  Really!  I can only remember one posture where my breath faltered.  That one lost breath out of hundreds was so noticeable that I pulled back a little physically (even though I felt great) to recalibrate the asana with my breathing and then carried on.

 

So, what did I take away from my really good practice?  Are there lessons to be learned from a yoga practice without challenges?

 

In short, yes.  But I received these gifts differently than I usually do.  As I began to move, I could feel that my energy was a little jagged.  Through the Sun Salutations my limbs alternated between feeling quivery and feeling solid.  But somewhere along the way, as I breathed and moved, things smoothed out.  I fully experienced each stretch as I breathed.  I felt like I could feel every fiber of every muscle.  By the time I sank into savasana, I was deeply settled in my body.  After practicing I felt great.  And when I told my husband how incredible it had been, he said, ”I can tell by looking at you.”  The physical gifts of that practice were actually visible.

 

It wasn’t only my body that benefitted that afternoon.  I went out to my mat fatigued from a long, interrupted night.  I was grouchy.  I hadn’t planned to practice that day, and my sudden desire to do so actually surprised me.  As I stood still in an opening meditation, my mind felt limp.  In order to find some kind of focus, I offered my practice as a moving prayer.  And then I began to move.  Maybe it was due to my semi-sleep-deprived state.  Maybe it was due to my intention to find some communion with God.  Whatever the reason, that day my mind stayed with my body and my breath.  I found mental rest in all the motion and effort of the practice.  I found peace and quiet as I moved and breathed.  I returned to my family a little easier to be with and a lot more eager to be with them.  The mental and emotional gifts of that practice reached beyond me to touch those I love.

 

I didn’t do anything particularly earth-shattering on my mat that day.  Rather, I flowed through a series of postures that I’ve moved through hundreds of times over the years.  But that afternoon things aligned for me on my mat in a way they haven’t in months.  My body, my mind and my breath all showed up ready, willing and able.  None of them needed extra attention.  None of them were reluctant.  None of them needed reining in.  As these three aspects of myself synchronized and flowed, the pathway cleared for me to receive a tremendous dose of yoga’s greatest gift.  I slipped a little closer to my spirit through my practice.  I glimpsed again the peace that is always deep within me.  I felt love wrap itself around me, move within me, and flow through me.

 

So, yeah!  I learned a huge lesson during that amazing practice.  Unlike many of the lessons I learn on my mat, however, I didn’t learn this one with my head.  I learned Sunday’s lesson with my heart and with my body.  It doesn’t diminish any of the intellectual lessons I have learned over the years on my mat.  It just feels like maybe this lesson is the doorway all those other lessons are pointing to.  It’s when our mind, body and spirit work in unison that we are most powerful.  It is then that we find peace within ourselves.  And it is only then that we are able to find lasting peace within the relationships and activities that fill our lives.

 

The challenge from my “practice without challenges” may yet be ahead of me.  Going forward I imagine I may have to work to receive each practice for what it is and for what it brings rather than comparing it to Sunday’s.  That said, the tantalizing thought that one day I could have another practice like that makes me sure that I’m up for it!

 

Namaste,

 

I had a dermatologist appointment early this week.  I go in annually to have my “freckles” checked out, but this year was a little different.  You see, a friend who has seen the same doctor as I have for years went to a new dermatologist.  She goes primarily to have one particular spot looked at, but wasn’t worried because she’d gotten a clean bill of health for several years in row.  However, the new doctor took one look at her spot and said it looked malignant and needed to come off.  (She’s totally fine, now, by the way.)  My friend called me as soon as she got in the car to tell me to make an appointment with this new doctor as soon as possible.  If our old doctor had been wrong about her spot, it followed that he could have been wrong about mine, too.

 

Fast forward to the weeks leading up to my appointment.  I spent a lot of time worrying about my skin.  I fixated on one specific mole.  My mind wandered away into “what ifs” and “worst case scenarios.”  I made mental plans for managing my business while I recuperated from what was sure to involve skin surgery and possibly even chemotherapy.  Basically, I made myself a little crazy.

 

You’d think I would have been looking forward to the appointment, right?  But I spent the morning of the appointment searching for a reason to cancel.  Even as I sat on the table in that paper dress, I toyed with the idea of not pointing out the spot that was worrying me.  Lucky for me, I had to wait a little bit for the doctor to come in.  During that wait, I took some yoga breaths to try to settle down.  Several inhales later, I realized that I’d actually arrived at the moment I’d been waiting for.  That the moment of truth had come.  As I allowed this feeling of calm to wash through me, I knew in my heart that, good news or bad, knowing would be better than all the worrying I was doing.  Whatever the verdict on my mole, I could and would handle it because it would be real and because I could take action.  I could “do” rather than “stew.”

 

Yoga is designed to teach us to stay in the moment.  In the kind of yoga I practice, we open with a fairly long series of Sun Salutations.  I guess you could say they are yoga’s warm-ups.  They require mental and physical endurance.  Physical endurance because – well, because they’re hard!  Mental endurance because they’re repetitive and it takes some conscious effort to keep your mind focused on how you’re moving your body when you’ve done the same series of movements 8 times in a row.  It’s tempting to allow your mind to wander away – to re-work a problem from earlier in the day or to worry an issue you’re going to have to deal with after class.  But, as soon as you allow that to happen, as soon as you embark on a Sun Salutation without the power of your full mental focus, the movements become exponentially harder.  It doesn’t take long on your yoga mat for your body to drag your mind back to the present moment!  To put it simply, your full attention is necessary in order to successfully navigate what you’re doing.

 

This is just not always true off our mats.  There are plenty of moments in life that we can breeze through while slightly distracted or even while fully engaged in a daydream or with a worry.  And when we start to pay attention, it can be truly shocking how much of our time is spent just this way.  Think about the things you do all the time.  Things where you have a mental “autopilot” function.  That’s when we’re at the greatest risk of acting unmindfully.  The effect is the same as when we talk on the phone and check our email at the same time.  (I hate to admit that I’ve been  guilty of this a few times.)  Inevitably, while we’re “um-humming” and “nuh-uhing” in the right places, we’re not really hearing what our friend is saying.  And certainly those emails that were so important that we allowed them to distract us from our conversation are going to go out with multiple spelling and grammatical errors.  While we can do both things at the same time, we can’t do either all that well.

 

And that’s really the whole point.  When we’re not fully focused on what we’re doing (mind and body in the same place, doing the same thing), we’re simply not functioning to our highest capability.  We’re selling ourselves short.  We even run the risk of hurting ourselves or someone else.  Despite all the “stewing” I was doing as my dermatologist appointment approached, I did not stop “doing.”  I’m sure I drove a lot of places, made many meals, and had numerous conversations where I wasn’t paying a lick of attention to what I was doing or even what I was saying.

 

While I didn’t wreck the car or accidentally poison anyone, while no long term injury came from my worry-filled time, I’m not going to get any of those distracted moments back.  Thankfully, my yoga practice is also teaching me not to “stew” on missed opportunities.  Life always provides another chance to try again – hopefully this time fully focused on whatever it is that I’m doing.  (And my chances are even higher because the new dermatologist gave me a clean bill of health!)

 

Namaste,

Amy

 

Well, it’s January 15.  How are you doing with your New Year’s Resolutions?

 

I haven’t even started mine yet.  Why?  Well, at first I couldn’t settle on one.  This has happened before and it hasn’t bothered me to head off into a new year resolution-less.  But this year, I knew I’d like to add something.  I just couldn’t decide what that “something” was.  Mix in a little uncharacteristic procrastination, a shipping delay from Amazon, and here I am, mid-month, with an uninitiated resolution.  Nevertheless, my intention remains to make good on my resolution, so I’m not beating myself up too much.  Despite the delay, I still have plenty of time to reap the rewards of my resolution over the course of the year.

 

But I’m not sure I’m the norm here.  Something about the tradition of setting New Year’s resolutions can send our expectations for ourselves to dizzying heights.  We get grand ideas.  We embark on tough paths with high hopes for tremendous change.  We have a tendency at this time of year more than any other to set pragmatism and reality aside.  “It’s a new year,” we think, “anything is possible!”

 

And, yes, anything is possible.  To stop believing that would be to sell ourselves short.  But despite the fact that it is a new year, it remains true that success is more likely when we take steady, regular, baby steps toward a goal than it is when we dash into whole-sale change.  Successful change is more likely when we allow the time for these changes to take root in our lives.  Successful change is more likely when we allow habits to develop.  Successful change is more likely when we go ahead and allow for the reality that we will most likely take a step back for every two or three steps forward.  Or, if you’re like me, you may even take a couple of steps back before you even get started!

 

Several years ago, a yoga classmate of mine set a whopper of a New Year’s resolution for herself.  It was a “significant” birthday year and she wanted to mark it in a notable way.  She decided that since yoga played such a powerful role in her life, that there was no better way to celebrate this particular birthday than with yoga.  She decided to practice yoga every day that year.  I swear it was about mid-January that she turned to me after class, crushed that she’d already “ruined” it by missing a day.  She was really beating herself up about “failing” so early in the year.

 

How I wish I’d known then what I know now about yoga!  If so, I would have encouraged her to pursue her goal – albeit modified slightly.  If you decide to run a race, you don’t just lace on your sneakers and go run it.  Do that and you’ll find yourself far from home wheezing on the sidewalk.  You have to train, and that training can take a really long time.  Similarly, if your goal is a daily yoga practice, you need to work up to it.  Even if you currently unroll your mat only once a week, simply adding an additional weekly practice every couple of months will have you on your mat six days a week by the end of the year.  And even the most ardent teachers consider a “daily practice” to include a day of rest each week.

 

Though it may buck the New Year’s tradition a bit, I think it’s important that we’re careful and clear about our expectations when we set our resolutions.  I think we need to take step back and get a better handle on what we’re really hoping for.  The reality is that, more often than not, it’s not achieving the goal that winds up being the most powerful part of the process.

 

If our resolution is to run a race, as amazing as it will feel to cross that finish line, that moment will not be our real reward.  Rather it is the self-discipline, the persistence, and the endurance that we receive from our weeks of training that we carry away with us.  If we’ve resolved to read the complete works of a favorite author this year, finishing the last page of the last book will not be our reward.  Rather, it is each moment of enjoyment that we spend reading that are the real gifts.  And the morning that we wake up to realize that we are (finally!) practicing yoga daily is not the point.  Rather, the gifts we receive along the way are what matter most.  Each restorative breath that we take on our mats.  Each little stress that we release through movement.   Each moment of quiet that we sink into.  These are the gifts that will change us, that will change our lives.

 

Even in a brand new year, when anything is possible, it remains the journey, not reaching our destination, that is most rewarding.

 

Namaste,

Amy

 

Have you ever seen the Saturday Night Live skit where Dan Akroyd plays Julia Child?  (http://ramascreen.com/dan-aykroyd-is-julia-child/)  He is standing behind the counter, manhandling a raw chicken while chatting on and on in perfect falsetto imitation of the great chef.  Suddenly, he pauses and says in a somewhat surprised tone, “I’ve cut the dickens out of my finger.”  The blood starts spurting as the audience bursts into laughter.  Well, last week it was me cutting the dickens out of my finger while cooking dinner.  The good news?  One trip to the emergency room and five stitches later, my finger is put back together.  The bad news?  I’m benched from my yoga mat until the stitches come out.

 

My finger hurt enough that I acquiesced to my sentence with surprising ease.  Nevertheless, for me, going ten days without getting on my mat is a really long time.  I wondered what I’d feel like during those ten days.  How would my body react?  Would I be a nightmare to live with?  I began to wonder if there was a way to incorporate not practicing asana into my daily yoga practice?  So, I decided to embark on my healing time as an experiment of sorts.  I decided to try to objectively observe the importance of my physical yoga practice to my greater goal of living my yoga in my daily life.

 

This is actually a topic that is debated with some frequency and passion in yoga circles.  Critics of “Americanized” yoga say that we’re overly focused on the physical side of the practice.  Some argue that we’ve reduced yoga into a yet another fitness fad, bleaching it of the real riches of the practice, which are spiritual in nature.  However, I’ve always felt that it doesn’t matter how or why people first stumble onto a yoga mat.  If they show up to achieve a healthier body, great!  If they show up to chill out or to calm down, great!  If they show up to find God, great!

 

The reality is that why we start practicing yoga quickly becomes irrelevant.  Just for a moment, think of yoga as a highway.  Each limb of yoga (the postures, the breathing, the morals, the concentration) is a separate entrance ramp.  It doesn’t matter which one we use.  All that matters is that we enter someway, somehow and keep going.  All of the limbs flow together.  I just don’t think it’s possible to limit ourselves to only one part of the practice.  Once you’re on the highway, you’re on!  No matter where or why we show up, no matter which entrance ramp we choose, yoga will draw us further along.  In other words, even if we’ve arrived on our mats searching for physical gifts such as weight loss, increased muscle tone, relief from chronic pain or freedom from tight muscles, in time our journey will reveal yoga’s spiritual and mental gifts as well.

 

I wasn’t too surprised to realize the importance of my physical yoga practice as I headed into the second half of my ten day hiatus.  Without asana, my body felt like it was contracting.  I felt fidgety.  Emotionally, I felt pent up; a little jittery; slightly irritable.  Energetically, I felt sluggish and sleepy.  Apparently, not only do I release energy and emotions on my mat, but I also create energy to carry me through my days.  Let’s just say, I much prefer the energy I create on my mat to the energy I release!  When I am able to practice, I walk off my mat feeling centered, balanced and focused.  Without that time spent moving and breathing, I feel more scattered, less clear, and less motivated.  I just don’t feel like me.

 

And that’s not all!  It turns out, the time I spend on my mat also plays a pretty powerful role in maintaining balance in my life.  Maybe some people outgrow the need for a physical practice, but I haven’t yet.  Even after eight years, I learned through these ten days that my physical practice still supports “the rest” of my yoga.  I did not decide to step away from reading Scripture or poetry each morning while I was injured, but I found that I did drift.  I did not decide to set my journal aside while I was healing, but that is exactly what happened.  As I move my body on my mat, I enter into a quiet, receptive state that I just don’t reach any other way.  There is nothing like asana to quiet my thinking, questioning, analytical mind.  There is nothing like savasana (resting pose at the end of a yoga session) to open me to meditation.  There is something about practicing yoga on my mat that helps me maintain the other spiritual and introspective practices that keep my life centered and in balance.

 

So, have we become overly focused on the physical side of yoga?  I don’t know.  Maybe.

 

What I learned in the last ten days is that, for me, the physical side of yoga is still awfully important.  Interestingly, though, I’ve learned that my physical yoga practice isn’t important for physical reasons.  (You know what I mean – for achieving cut upper arms or a perky yoga bottom.)  In my life, the physical practice of yoga is important because it stills my mind so that I can better focus on my daily experiences.  It’s important because it sharpens my yearning for a deeper, richer, more meaningful life.  It’s important because it opens my spirit so I can better discern my path --- and so I can better open my arms to embrace those I encounter while walking it.

 

Happily headed back to my mat,

Amy

 

I ran into a friend of mine late last week.  He’s had an unbelievably bad year.  The kind of year that, if an author described it in a novel, would leave you scoffing at her wild imagination.  As I gave him a hug, he said vehemently, “I cannot WAIT to shake off the dust of 2009!”

 

As I processed his words, I realized that while I will probably never fully know how the events of this year have made him feel, I do fully understand how he feels about the start of a new year.  In fact, I bet we all do.  There is something about the start of a new year that is hopeful and promising – no matter if the preceding year has been a terrible one, a good one, or just another year.   If, like my friend, you’re finishing a really bad year, there is something about the start of a new year that feels like pressing a cosmic “Reset Button.”  And, when you get right down to it, the same is true for those of us who are finishing better years, too.  I imagine it is the intensity of our relief when we hit that metaphorical button that will vary.

 

Yoga teaches us about new beginnings each and every time we unroll our mats.  If we’re really paying attention, our bodies feel completely different from one practice to the next – even if we’re practicing every day.  One day we might feel old and creaky, the next loose and limber.  One day we may find we can’t move into a posture that we sailed into the day before.  One day we may fight our practice tooth and nail, the next we may be fully focused for the whole hour and a half.  One day ten sun salutations in a row may leave us feeling bright and energized, the next we might finish them completely sapped of strength and stamina.

 

On our mats, each day is like pressing a “Reset Button.”  When we practice regularly, we begin to feel confident about pressing that “button.”   We begin to understand that, on our mats, a bad day is not an indicator of more bad days to come.  And neither are the good days.  We begin to see the gift of new beginnings.  We begin to be better able to set aside our anticipation – whether dread of another bad day or excitement for another good one.  We begin to approach each new beginning with curiosity.  And confidence.  We begin to approach each new beginning with confidence that, whatever that new beginning brings, we’ll be fine.

 

It is this confidence that we’ll be fine no matter what happens when we hit that cosmic “Reset Button” that I hope we can all take away from our mats as we move into this New Year.  While the ups and downs we navigate in life are clearly more meaningful than the ups and downs we navigate on our yoga mats, we find that our yoga has helped us master some powerful tools for living.  On our mats, we’ve learned to take one breath at a time.  We now know that when we focus on that breath, we’re less likely to get overwhelmed by the challenge of a posture or by our jubilation at getting into an asana.  On our mats, we’ve learned to deliberately, diligently rein in our minds to keep them from wandering off to the past or the future.  We now know that when we stick with the present, there’s always plenty to keep us fully occupied.  On our mats, we’ve learned that we receive gifts from our “bad” practices and our “good” ones.  We now know that, even when we’re not having as much fun, we’re growing and learning and living.

 

So, whether 2009 was a good, a bad or just another year for you, it is my sincere wish that you relish the start of this New Year with confidence and curiosity.  I hope its beginning feels as auspicious as when you hear that “thwack” of your yoga mat unfurling.  I hope you know that your tool belts are full of powerful tools to help you navigate whatever comes your way this year.

 

Happy New Year!

Amy

 

I just received a Christmas card from a friend that said, “Let’s be kind to our loved ones --- forever and for real.”  What a lovely and true Christmas message, one that gets right to the very heart of the season.  It echoes the seasonal message I’ve always found to be so powerful - “goodwill to all men.”  Something about the Christmas season inspires us to reach out with gestures of love and kindness, of goodwill, in other words.

 

One of the overarching intentions of yoga is to inspire in us a higher level of love and kindness for the people around us.  Interestingly, if folks are going to criticize the practice, they often do so by suggesting that yoga is self-indulgent, that it is narcissistic, or that it is overly focused on oneself.  And I suppose, to those unfamiliar with the practice, that it can seem like this.  After all, we do practice yoga alone on our mats.  It is about learning to care for our bodies.  It is about learning to care for ourselves.

 

In teaching us to practice “goodwill,” yoga has us start with ourselves.  On our mats we learn that even the smallest gestures of love and kindness make a tremendous difference.  We find that the simple act of devoting time to ourselves to spend on our mats has hugely positive effects.  We feel better – inside and out.  As we dedicate ourselves to practicing yoga, we learn to take responsibility for caring for ourselves.  We find that a little compassion for ourselves is a powerful thing as we give ourselves a break when we’re having a rough day and opt for a gentle practice rather than the vigorous one to which we’ve become accustomed.  We find that acceptance is a tremendously liberating gift to receive when we allow ourselves to appreciate our bodies rather than to criticize them.

 

As we get more and more comfortable offering these gifts – love, kindness, devotion, compassion, acceptance – to ourselves on our yoga mats, giving them becomes second nature.  Giving them becomes part of the way we naturally live and love.  We begin to be freer with these gifts to those closest to us.  We may even notice a desire to reach out beyond our circle of family and friends to “share the love” we’ve found on our mats.  The bottom line is that we work so hard on our yoga mats to take care of ourselves so that we are better able go out into the world and give back the gifts we receive from our practice.  We learn to be kind to ourselves – “forever and for real” – so that it is second nature to be kind to the world around us – “forever and for real.”

 

And this time of year seems to bring that urge front and center.  Certainly, we reach out to our far-flung friends and family with greeting cards and gifts.  That’s an integral part of Christmas, after all.  As my yoga practice has evolved, so has a wonderful family tradition.  Over the years, my family has begun to consciously reach out beyond ourselves.  Each year we do this in different ways.  My husband and I have found it powerful to let our kids determine how we will reach out each holiday season.  Some years we opt to fill a Christmas basket for our church’s outreach program.  For several years in a row we selected gifts from an angel tree at my husband’s office.  One year, we contributed to a care package for our troops serving overseas.  And last year, we made a donation to a global charity the kids had heard about.

 

No matter how we’ve chosen to give, the act of extending ourselves in some small way beyond our immediate circle of loved ones has become a keystone to our family Christmas celebration.  While I am the only one in our family who regularly practices yoga, I like to think that this family tradition is a direct result of the deepening of my yoga practice.  Yoga has touched my life to such an extent that it has leaked out to touch my children and my husband, too.  And, through the gifts we give each Christmas, I suppose it’s not a great stretch to think that my practice is making a difference in the lives of people I’ll never meet or know.

 

In part, what we’re doing when we reach out beyond ourselves is accepting responsibility for taking care of the world around us.  We’re acknowledging that we are all connected simply because we’re sharing life on this planet.  We’re accepting that, no matter how small we feel in the scheme of things, we can make a tremendous difference in the lives of others.  I believe that it is when we extend ourselves to embrace others – those we know and those we may never know – that we’re actually living as the kind of people God hopes we will be.  We are taking a step closer to growing into the people we hope to be.  What greater gift than that can we give ourselves?

 

Ideally, we’ll maintain our awareness of the generous part we can play in the world around us throughout the year.  However, even if we just wake up to our role during the Christmas season our gestures of goodwill will create ripples of love and kindness “forever and for real.”

 

Wishing you the merriest of Christmases,

Amy

 

Over the weekend, as I stood shoulder to shoulder with my son in the Nerf aisle at Toys R Us, I cringed as I worried that what I thought was a very grown-up phenomenon had trickled down to my child.  You see, he is the Secret Santa for one of his classmates for the next week.  The boy he was assigned to is someone JB looks up to a bit.  He is someone JB thinks is “cool” and, thus, hopes will think he is cool too.  So my son seemed to feel a little added pressure to choose exactly the right gift as we stood there staring at the vast selection of squishy, foamy toys.  It looked to me that he had fallen prey to a notion that is rampant in our society during this crazy gift-filled month – the idea that “you are what you give.”

 

At first glance, this misapprehension can seem healthier than its sister - “you are what you have.”  But, upon reflection, I think it can actually be more damaging if only for its sneakiness.  After all, it’s pretty easy to recognize when we’re trying to make ourselves feel better after a rough day by going on a spending spree at The Gap.  I think most of us will agree that having trendy clothes just does not automatically translate into being happy, contented people.  That shopping spree simply provides a giddy moment of acquisition that temporarily distracts us from our problem.  It doesn’t take too much enlightenment to realize that the new clothes we simply had to have are but a Band-aid and that real healing can only come from addressing the actual issue – whatever that is.

 

We practice this awareness on our mats all the time when we’re chasing a posture we can’t quite get into.  It doesn’t take long to have the epiphany that just because we can get into a complicated or challenging asana doesn’t mean that our practices are “advanced” or that we’ve reached the end of our yoga journey.  A look around any yoga class will reveal that the students we most want to emulate are the ones who move into a posture – even the simplest ones - gracefully and hold it with seeming ease.  It is evident as we watch them that they are practicing for gifts way beyond the physical.  They exude an inner-peacefulness that we want for ourselves.  On our yoga mats, what our practice “has” (i.e. tough, tricky postures) is not a basis at all for what our practice “is.”

 

As we witness these yogis practicing for the sake of the practice, we can see our yearning for more advanced postures for what it is.  A yearning for “more.”  A yearning for a slightly different giddy moment of acquisition than the one we experienced on our shopping spree, but a moment of acquisition all the same.  This awareness gets a little muddy, however, when the recipient in question is no longer us.  How can it be wrong to want to choose exactly the right gift for someone we care about?  How can it be wrong to want to find a gift so stellar and so perfect that it conveys all that we feel about its recipient?  Isn’t this just generosity?  Isn’t this desire an expression of our giving, loving heart?  How can that be bad?

 

The desire to give to those we love is not the problem.  In fact, that desire is at the very root of love.  Where we can get tripped up especially at this time of year is in thinking that the gift itself is the point.  Rather, the whole point is the gesture of giving.  As any yoga posture can yield many different gifts, any gift, no matter the magnitude, can have a variety of meanings.  It could say, “I was thinking of you and wanted to give this to you.”  Or it could say, “I love you.”  Or, as my son hopes his Secret Santa gift will, it could say, “I like you enough that I’ve paid attention to your interests and have chosen a gift I hope you enjoy.”  Our gifts don’t need to come in distinctive boxes or have hefty price tags.  With the right words and intention, the simplest of gifts can convey exactly what we’re feeling.

 

As JB waffled and worried in the toy aisle, I began to explain that nothing on those shelves of toys would be able to convey all he was feeling -- especially not in the $10 and under range to which he was limited!  But before I could get going, he cut me off to say that his teachers had told him that it was the little gestures and surprises all week long that were the most important part of their activity.  He was only two days into it and was proud that he’d already figured out a way to slip the stone his Secret Santa was looking for onto his desk, and had shared his snack when the boy was hungry.  His teachers had emphasized that the gift at the end of the week was simply a way to reveal the identity of each student’s Secret Santa.  As I stood there, mouth agape, at the wisdom that had just flowed from my son, he turned back to the Nerf toys and pulled a miniature football off the shelf, saying, “I just remembered that he’s really into football, Mommy.”

 

Maybe, just maybe, he’s going to grow up to avoid that nasty notion of “you are what you give” after all!

 

Namaste,

Amy www.yogawithspirit.com

 

With the holiday season in full swing we often find ourselves dashing from one fun thing to the next. This month can be a veritable whirlwind of celebration.  It’s fun!  It’s joyful!  But it can also be exhausting.  It is, after all, possible to have too much of a good thing.  Figuring out when enough is enough can be a real balancing act.

 

I have a good friend who always seems to be doing something fun.  She and her husband are happy, whirling dervishes during December!  My friend fills her cup by surrounding herself with people, by soaking in new experiences, and by giving of herself and her time in many, many ways.  I, on the other hand, require a slower pace.  Like my friend, I love a good party and I think there’s no better way to celebrate the holidays than with good friends.  But I’ve found that quiet nights at home aren’t just nice, they’re a necessary way for me to keep my cup full.  I’ve learned over the years that one night out on the weekend is a good thing.  But, two nights out?  Not so much.  When that happens, I often drag myself into the next week dull and tired rather than shining from all the fun I’ve had.  My friend and I have found very different ways to find balance in our lives.

 

As different people find balance in different ways off their mats, the same is true on.  Students ask me all the time how often they should practice yoga.  Some are concerned about squeezing yoga into already jammed schedules and wonder if once a week is enough to provide them with some of yoga’s gifts.  I often encourage these folks to make the time for one more time on the mat than they are already used to.  I firmly believe that when we are deliberate about making time in our lives for yoga, it shifts our perspective just enough that everything else seems a little more manageable.  For people who regularly feel overwhelmingly busy, adding yoga to their days is a great antidote.  Suddenly, they seem to have enough time in their days to work through their to-do lists and to practice yoga.

 

But some students are swept up by the practice and want more, more, more.  They might come to more and more classes each week.  Perhaps they purchase a video or two and begin developing a home practice.  “If practicing twice a week makes me feel this good,” they think, “imagine how awesome I’ll feel if I practice every day!”  It’s fun!  It feels great!  Until they realize their bodies are a little sore or realize they feel exhausted when they leave their mats.  When these folks come to me with questions about the intensity of their practices, I often encourage them to dial things back a little bit.  As counter-intuitive as it may seem, it is possible to have too much of a good thing on our mats as well.  Figuring out how much yoga is right for us can be a real balancing act.

 

As we have off our mats, my friend and I have found our way to very different balances on them.  My friend has found that practicing yoga a couple of times a week leaves her feeling great.  When she does more yoga, she begins to notice aches and pains that she does not have otherwise.  For me, it’s different.  Over the years, I have found that practicing yoga many times a week leaves me feeling as good as I’ve ever felt inside and out.  When I get on my mat most days, my body stays open and relaxed between practices.  When I stay away from my mat for too many days in a row, I begin to notice aches and pains that I do not have otherwise.  How did we each find the answer to the question, “How many times a week should I practice yoga?”  By practicing.  By noticing how we feel.  And by trusting that what feels right for each of us is truly right for us.

 

In one of my favorite poems, Trees by Mary Oliver, we’re offered a lovely aspiration for a life well lived.  She writes that we “have come into this world … to go easy, to be filled with light and to shine.”  While we can’t control most of what life brings our way, we do control the “extras” – the entertainment, the festivities, and, yes, the practices like yoga -- that we add into the mix.   We want to make sure that what we add into our lives feeds us.  We want to make sure that the “extras” in our lives fill us with light and leave us shining brighter.  And that’s what it’s all about.  Figuring out through trial and error what fills our cups.  Just as we enjoy different rhythms on our mats, my friend and I are enjoying wildly different Decembers by choosing “extras” that leave us shining brightly.  I hope you’ve found your balance too.

 

May you be filled with light and shine brightly,

Amy