There are times when we feel depleted; spread too thin, emotionally over taxed, or tested once too often. It can feel like you’ve exhaled all of your air but cannot breathe in. so what to do in times like these, how do we pull ourselves up when we have no reserve left? This is the question I’ve been struggling with for a time now and I still don’t have an answer but today I had a thought. Surrender. I’ve been running around trying to find a way to “fix” myself and all the things and situations around me and nothing worked. Fighting fire with fire, or exhaustion with more work and I didn’t even realize how useless it was and how I had created a tornado, spiraling in on itself and sucking up all my joy. So today when the threat of rain cancelled all my “get happy” plans I decided just to give up. I drove to the lake with my dog rain or now rain to sit by the water and feel a little nature. While i was driving I used the time to test out a new yoga mix I was building for class. While I was driving listening to George Harrison sing “My Sweet Lord” and the chorus behind him sing salutations in Sanskrit to the deities the sun came out and for a moment my tired soul lifted. In my heart I thought “ok, I’m just going to surrender now and trust that something out there has a better idea of what is supposed to happen.” It was a moment of freedom. I can’t fight anymore, people will think what they want, injuries will happen, friends will come and go and the only thing I can do is trust. Trust that for whatever reason someone may have for something that is their truth, if I try to change them it will most likely just lead to more conflict. I can’t magically heal my shoulder so I will have compassion while I practice and trust that I will heal and maybe even learn something new about my body. And friends, I can’t hold on to expectations whatever is going on in their lives is their own and I have to trust that they do love me and will make time for me when they can. Though my moment of freedom in the car was not long lived I do feel, even at the bottom of this well, that I will feel free again and my joy will return. And that’s the gift yoga has given me today, the freedom to not have and answer but to believe and feel certain one will come.

the story of Second Star

“second star to the right and straight on till morning…”

I’ve always wanted to be Peter Pan; grinning and free; sweeping up lost children and flying them off to a place where they create their own perfect world. Neverland. What a beautiful concept.

Years ago I was working at a spa in Atlanta and while consulting a client about what she was hoping to get out of her hour long massage she replied, “I want to go to Neverland.” I smiled and in my head I thought, “second star to the right…” and that was the moment I knew how I could be Peter Pan, sort of. If I could create a space where for one hour people leave there lives and just be…just be…then for one hour maybe they will find themselves in Neverland. So almost 10 years later I am opening Second Star Studio, my life’s dream, a place to walk into and leave the world outside.

I visited the town I now live in for the first time 4 summers ago. As I drove out of the city 45 minutes to the west and watched the scenery melt into rolling hills and farm land speckled with the odd village or township I could feel myself ease, like my entire body was taking a long sigh. By the time I pulled into my tiny town I was grinning. By the very next morning I knew I had found home. It took 3 more years of returning in the summers before I managed to move here year round but I knew the timing was right. I bought a house and settled into my role as town yoga teacher. I thought “ok I’ll do this for a while, maybe a year or two, and then start looking for a place to open a studio.” A month later I had rented a store front.

The old video store in town had been closed for 4 years and had become a graveyard of TV and computer monitors, various scraps of drywall, ceiling tiles and carpets, and layers upon layers of dirt and dust ground into the blue linoleum floor. I had found a building but it was going to need some serious sweat equity. So I dove in. I was lucky enough when I bought the house that it was in amazing shape and even more amazing was the group of friends that showed up to help me paint and move in. So being not wiped out from the move I had plenty of time to scrub the studio. But I had no idea what a huge task that would be. For 3 weeks pushed around debris, scrubbed the floor, painted, scrubbed the floors again, shampooed the carpet and scrubbed the floors even more. When I say that there is not an inch of that studio I haven’t touch with my two hands I mean that in the most literal sense! But even in those late hours into the evening when I was tired and sore a student or co-worker would pass by and come inside to see the transformation taking place. And before I knew it I was grinning again, walking them through my plans for the design of the studio. Covered in dirt and Simple Green I was still happy because I was building my very own Neverland; place for yoga, massage, art and anything that helps people find their bliss. And on Monday the doors will open and I will teach my very first yoga class in my own studio and as most yogis would agree Savasana is pretty darn near Neverland.

It took a long time to get to my Second Star and it wasn’t easy once I did but I’m here now and I can’t wait to share it with everyone. Through all the journeying and under all the dirt there was something special waiting; a hidden potential. As yoga teach that’s what I’m always looking for in my students, the ability to do something that they may not think possible and then to guide them along the way. Just like Peter Pan scooping up the lost boys and guiding them to Neverland. So I officially call out to you, if you are looking for an escape from life for a while I’d be happy to help you find it, we’ll start at Second Star

bread for hunger, food for thought

What a terrible day to make bread, but I am. In fact at this moment I have 2 loaves of bread trying their darnedest to rise on this dreary and cold day. I would like them to turn out nice and fluffy as I am taking them to a picnic tomorrow to share with friends but like in my yoga classes I have to let go of the outcome and be content with the effort. But that’s not the lesson that was made clear to me today as I baked or kneaded rather. What became clear was that more often the harder we work the less pleasing our outcome is.

Lately I’ve been looking for ways to explain the idea of yoga as a process and respecting each step along that process. Yes we all want to be able to throw our feet over our heads into a perfect handstand or float gracefully in balancing poses. So much so that we skip the preparatory work that builds the proper strength and alignment in our bodies that make those asana available to us. I see many students struggle because they think their bodies “should” be able to do something. I try to explain that there is no one perfect asana, that every step along the way is that asana, but really, no one wants to hear that when they want to be standing on their heads. This is where I find I real distance from my students. I’ve been practicing yoga for long enough that I know my body’s limits; I know where the edge is that I can go to safely to deepen without injury. Or do I?

Today while I was kneading out my dough I remembered the words of a friend, a much better baker than I, to be gentle with the dough. My thought was the more these ingredients are mixed together the better the muffins, to which her response was, “yeah if you want hockey pucks.” Point taken my friend. In fact as I’ve started baking more over the past year or so often recipes remind us not to over work the dough or your bread will be hard as…well a hockey puck. I caught myself mixing flour, salt, eggs rapidly into the yeast mix when I remembered all that advice and I slowed it down, when it came time to turn the dough out onto the counter I very gently sprinkled with flour and pushed, rolled and turned my dough oh so tenderly. Reminding myself that even though I felt like I “should” be kneading harder that by over working the dough the bread will become stiff and hard and then I thought “just like muscles.” Ah ha! There it is the lesson I’ve been looking for for over 3 weeks.

See 3 weeks ago I decided to improve my physical practice. I have pretty limited flexibility for a yoga teach and I honestly felt I was doing my students a disservice by not being able to illustrate asanas to their full extent. So I’ve been working very hard; I’ve been running to increase stamina, extra core work to better my arm balances, lots of shoulder work etc… and you know what? I’m in pain. I’ve been over kneading my muscles and they are turning into hard achy loaves of bread. And what’s worse I’ve not being practicing what I teach; patience, acceptance, compassion. Boy did I fall of the philosophical wagon! In the amount of time it took to knead a dough ball (8 minutes roughly) I had relearned what took me years to grasp fully. Who knew baking could provide not only for our physical hungry but for our spiritual hunger as well. Actually the lesson came to me about 3 minutes into the kneading so I spent the other 5 minutes thinking about how to change my practice and to better respect my body AND my body’s limit. I would like to go into further detail about that but my timer is about to go off.

An Hour a Day

How hard is it to find an hour a day? Pretty hard. At this point in my life I’m only partially employed; teaching yoga and freelancing on the side. I don’t have the typical 40 hour work week that many I know do, nor do I have other obligations such as a spouse or children that I make time for. All in all I have a pretty easy schedule. My day starts like this: wake up, walk the dog, simple meditation, coffee and while I have my dark roasted decaf I look at the day ahead and that’s where I get into trouble. I can over program a schedule by the time I’m down to the last drop. Being a new home owner I have plenty of projects around the house and yard and then there’s the new studio which needs lots of TLC. There are many things to get distracted by and if I don’t plan out my day then I will get distracted or worse forget I had things I wanted to accomplish and do virtually nothing. And even though I am embarrassed to admit it yoga is one of the things that gets forgotten. If I don’t put yoga somewhere on my to do list I will most likely not do it. I am a bad yogi. Or am I?

I would love to say I’m one of those amazing and grounded people who get up every day at 4 and do yoga and meditate for 3 hours, but when it comes right down to it I simply not. I live in the constructs of a modern world so getting up at 4 doesn’t fit into that lifestyle. But what I can do is live within these constructs without losing the integrity of my practice. When I sit down to look at my day not matter how quickly it fills I know to “schedule” and hour for my yoga practice. I may not even get that whole hour I may settle for 20 minutes between jobs or appointments but knowing that I have set aside that time, made room for it in my life, assures me it will happen. Every self help book and guru will tell you take time for you, take time for you; even if it’s just five minutes to have a cup of tea in silence or a walk around the block without your iPod. But I think that for me it goes deeper than that. I don’t do yoga for me; I do yoga for everyone else in my life. Yogic philosophy teaches us to have compassion and respect for everyone and really the heart of it is recognizing the divinity within every person as well as in ourselves. So for me putting yoga on my to do list has less to do with taking time for me or keeping limber but it’s an act of respect. I respect all of the things yoga has to teach me by carving out even 20 minutes to let those lessons have a chance to sink in. If you’ve ever taken a yoga class hopefully you’ve been lucky enough to come up from Savasana feeling so at peace with yourself and the world that you can’t even imagine that horrible mood you were in just yesterday. For me it’s like waking up being madly in love with everything. And no, we don’t get that feeling every yoga class but how amazing would it be to start having more often. What kinds of beautiful things could manifest if we had a little more peace and joy in our lives? I think that’s something worth putting on our to do lists.

yoga saves the day

How does yoga help us through traumatic events? Here’s my story:

For those of you who are not dog owners, imagine seeing your child run into the street while there’s a truck barreling down the road. That’s what it felt like to me 7 years ago when a stranger walked up and scared my dog so terribly that she pulled the leg off the bench her leash was tethered too and took off down the street. I was frantic, I bolted after her but before I had reached the end of the block she was out of site. We lived just a few blocks down the street so I knew that’s where she was heading but I couldn’t get there, I was crippled by shock, I wanted to melt into the side walk and weep. Halfway up the next block I did sort of, I was confused and hopeless. I knew she would have made it home already but what would she do when no one was there? I stopped running started hyper ventilating a stranger snapped me out of it when she came from the direction my dog ran off in and asked “was that your dog?” I didn’t answer I started running again but awkwardly through my heaving sobs. When I made it to the house I saw her leash wrapped around the gate post, she must have gotten caught and then broke free and, I can only imagine, furthering her panicked state. When I wasn’t there to open the door she must have taken off again. She was gone for 3 days, the worst 3 days I’ve ever had. Just before dawn on day 4 I woke to scratching at the back door, she had come home. Happy ending. So where’s the yoga?

A week ago I was out with my dog for our morning walk, we we’re coming through the park where there is nice bit of lawn and trees in the back behind some picnic tables. I often let her off her leash so she can sniff around; there is rarely anyone at the park that early. But that day there was. I didn’t see the two other dogs running towards mine until it was too late. I saw her tuck her tale under and quicken her step, I called to her but as the dogs got closer she bolted down the alley. I knew the other two dogs wanted nothing more than to play but to a dog that has been lost once and attacked by strange dogs more than once her fear took over and she bolted. This is our morning ritual so she knew how to get home and being only a few blocks away I had no doubt that’s where she was headed so I took off too. And here is where yoga made all the difference. Unlike seven years ago I wasn’t crippled by shock or grief, not in the least. In fact, being so trusting of my body and its capabilities I simply let my instincts take over. My spine straightened, my legs and arms pumped in perfect unison my breath was deep and quick but most what struck me the most was the calmness I had. Everything just dropped out of my mind somewhere deep within me I knew that if I could keep her in my site everything would be ok. In meditation they talk about having a single pointed focus, to train the mind to ignore distraction and rein in on one thought, usually the breath. That is one of the main reasons in yoga class we constantly return to the breath. Yoga can be seen as a moving meditation as well as a preparation for deep completive meditation. It prepares the body for hours of sitting in one position and all thoughts other than the breath have been dismissed. Now I am not a great yogi and my meditation practice leaves much to be desired but in those few moments of what was once a panic I saw how far I had come with my practice. And what a gift it brought me, I caught up to my frightened pooch and sat with her in the road until she was calm enough to walk home. Once we got there we sat in the middle of the house and I stroked her until she let go of her own panic and went calmly and exhaustedly to her favorite spot under the table and went to sleep. I sat there and watched her and marveled at the situation. Yoga gave me two amazing gifts that morning; one: the knowledge that no matter how stagnant I feel in my practice I am growing and two: my furry four legged child is still safely in my life.

Hitting a Stride

Over the past year I have been trying to integrate running into my life. I love yoga! I love how it has transformed my body, regulated my hummingbird-like metabolism and brought calmness to my mind. The only thing I don’t get from yoga is cardio. Sure I could power my way through a killer vinyasa workout, but I won’t. I like my practice quiet. So I was in search for a way to mingle cardio into my life, running seemed the most accessible so that’s what I’ve been trying. But like all new things I approached it like a yogi, with appreciation, respect and enjoyment. You can practice yoga for purely physical reasons, even see results but you’ll only be getting a slice of a much bigger and more fulfilling whole. And its my personal belief that if you approach anything without respect chances are you will get hurt and most likely be disappointed too. And the same is holding true with running. I appreciate the improvements running has made to my health and I respect it for all the good, if I approach running carelessly it can do greater harm than good. So once I grasped appreciation and respect the enjoyment came easily. I get to be outside in this glorious spring and when I’m really lucky I get to have an awesome four legged companion by my side. And this all started to fall into place in the past few weeks, I settled into my stride you might say. In fact I was writing an email and used the phrase, hitting my stride, to describe a sewing project I’m working on. So running has not only worked its way into my exercise regiment but also into my lingo. And that got me thinking. Not only have I found a running stride and a sewing stride and even a yoga stride but I think I’ve found a life stride. At least a stride for this little stretch of my life. I’m settling into my house nicely, working out my morning routine, finding time to walk the dog every day, tackling this sewing project and even developing potential for a new business venture. And it feels great! I don’t do the same things everyday or in the same order but there’s a rhythm to it and more importantly there’s a purpose. It feels like a life sized version of an amazing yoga class. The kind of class where the rhythm of the breath takes over and the flow from asana to asana is seamless. Your citta vrtti (mind chatter) quiets there’s fluidity within you and all around you. If I were a surfer I would liken it to a long effortless ride on a beautiful wave ( I visualization I use in class). I don’t know how long this ride is going to last but I am keenly aware of every moment I’m in it and extremely grateful for every moment longer that it last. It also seems this smooth stride has brought its own tool for longevity. It has brought the ability to deal with obstacles as simple stones in the road. When spotted they can be easily side stepped and when not seen and possibly tripped on or stumbled over, my stride is so well established that it takes mere moments to recover. And this is a tool I hope to hold on to no matter how long my stride stays strong. Running is something I never thought I’d do but yoga has a way of melting down any preconceived notions we have about ourselves. And even better giving us the ability to tackle those notions and prove them wrong. That kind of potential is very exciting. The other thing exciting I’ve learned is that there is a movement in the running world to practice running like we practice yoga…BAREFOOT!

house training

I just bought a house which is exhilarating, joyous and terrifying! Most amusingly the thing that terrifies me the most is not the home ownership stuff; the repairs, the up keep, the mortgage. Nope for me the hardest thing about owning a home is the cleaning. I’m a little bachelor-esque, a little messy, not dirty just…untidy. I’m so excited about my very first, very own home that I want to invite people over for dinner and coffee and deck time and dog dates but that means I have to keep my house presentable; tidy! Enter yoga.

I few months ago I was reading a brief article in Yoga Journal about respecting inanimate objects; I know it sounded a little kooky to me too. At first. The article brought up the question of why studio owners place emphasis on having students remove their shoes before entering the studio, stowing props just so and even folding blankets in a certain pattern. Which brought to my mind several studios I’ve worked for which had (to me at the time) ridiculously strict rules about the exact placement of blanket folds. But as the article went on it began to explain that learning to have respect for the little things brings awareness to our daily lives and thus that attitude of respect seeps into the larger things. Have you ever been rushed? So rushed that when you walk into your office, home or get into your car that you throw your bag into the seat or onto the desk or floor? Only to find later that your watch, earrings, fountain pen has broken. Because you didn’t have respect for your bag you now have blue ink all over its contents. So I decided to implement this concept of respecting all objects into my life in preparation for moving into my home. I would no longer disrespect the dishes by leaving them for days (yes days) dirty in the sink, I would no longer disrespect my coats by tossing them on the chair or floor when I walked in and I would place my bag in a designated spot with much less force (much the delight of my reading glasses). And all was well. Not! This stuff is hard, breaking habits is a struggle and no singular tactic works for everyone. But this is the tactic I utilized.

Smother it in love! This is a phrase I use when teaching. Because I don’t shy away from teaching difficult asanas to my students I try to make them feel completely supported by me but also by themselves. I tell them when they are practicing an asana they fear or just plain don’t like to take mental step back and smother that asana in love. Within that pose there is something to learn, something to be gained and maybe all you need it to try a different perspective. Instead of approaching it with fear or anger try to embrace it. Love it, love it so much that it submits to you and you find joy in your body while in that asana. And that is the tactic I have brought to my house keeping. I don’t like doing the dishes but I love having a clean sink in the morning. So I take that love of the final outcome and smother the process in it. And that helps me through the process. Even things I really dislike like laundry seem doable because I have so much love for my new house and I use that love to teach myself how to make it a home. I can even smile with my dish pan hands.