Liquid Bliss (lik’wid blis)

There is something to be said for doing things the old-fashioned way. In our rush to keep up with our busy lives we take shortcuts. We grab something prepared for dinner as we rush home from work and we lose the joy of hearing a stew simmering away on the stove. We buy bread at the grocery store and never experience the feeling of our hands kneading dough or the taste of bread just out of the oven. In other words, modern life makes things easy & convenient in a million little ways but, does something important get lost along the way? For all our modern conveniences are we better off than our grandparents or great-grandparents? (more…)

“Optimist; Daydreamer more elegantly spelled”- Mark Twain

This weekend I had the pleasure to attend a 70th wedding anniversary party.  Statistically, getting to 70 years of marriage has to be about as likely as getting struck by lightning.  In today’s world it is nothing short of a miracle. So when you see two happy, healthy people in their 90s, getting decked out in corsages and boutonnieres, to celebrate a milestone like a 70th wedding anniversary you have to stop and take notice.    (more…)

“We live in a river of change, and a river of change lives within us. Every day we’re given a choice: We can relax and float in the direction that the water flows, or we can swim hard against it. If we go with the river, the energy of a thousand streams will be with us, filling our hearts with courage and enthusiasm. If we resist the river, we will feel rankled and tired as we tread water, stuck in the same place”- Elizabeth Lesser (more…)

We talk often about ‘heart opening’ in a physical and emotional sense in our yoga class. One of our aims on our yoga mats is to open ourselves up to new experience and emotions even when that is challenging or scary. But why is that so important? Why does keeping our hearts open to love matter? Why is vulnerability important? I certainly don’t have the answers, but I wanted to share this quote (from one of my favorite books “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Marie Rilke) with all of you because it always helps to shine a little light on these very challenging questions for myself. (more…)

It’s easy to add yoga to our ‘to-do’ list…making it yet another thing, like getting our teeth cleaned or taking vitamins, that we should do. Many of us tend to approach our practice that way too. We work hard to achieve a certain posture or certain ‘level’ without really having fun along the way. Discipline is certainly important, but yoga can also be joyful and playful and fun. What would happen to your practice if you approached it as you would have when you were 6 years old? Do you remember what it felt like as a child to climb a tree or do a cartwheel? Can you remember a time when you never worried about looking silly or falling down in the mud? Bring that inner child, the one who is fearless and ready to play, into your next practice with you and notice how much more fun your practice becomes. I encourage you to cultivate a childlike sense of play each time you step onto a mat. (more…)

It might sound strange…but I think that times like these can be kind of exciting. When things are challenging, we learn what we are made of and how strong, resourceful and capable we really are. Change can be scary, but it can also bring new opportunities and take our lives in exciting directions that we never imagined. If we open our eyes and really look…we see that change is a gift. Think back to the first time you stepped on to your yoga mat. Maybe there was a posture that you never thought you could do. Now think back to the first time you did indeed get into it and how strong and happy you felt. Had that posture come easily, that moment would not have been nearly as sweet. Challenges in our life can be that way too. We rarely savor the things in life that came easily to us, but the things that we worked hard and fought for.

“Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging it’s gifts by their wrapping, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the wrapping and you will find beneath it a iving splendor, woven of love, wisdom and power. The gloom of the world is but a shadow. There is radiance and glory in the darkness…could we but see” -Fra Giovanni

Often our job on the yoga mat is to not get in our own way too much. We come to our mats loaded up with expectations of what our bodies should look like, what our practices should be like and how strong and flexible we should be. We look over at the person next to us and imagine that they must not feel the same way. The truth is that everyone feels this way at times on the mat, myself included. When we start to get out of our own way and just let our practice unfold, we realize that our bodies are just fine as they are and that our practice doesn’t need to look or feel any particular way. When we get rid of the ’shoulds’, we realize that there is no perfect. There is only were we are at in that particular moment. We already have all of the strength, flexibility and grace that we need inside of ourselves.

“The mysticism of yoga is this….that we can step up to our mat, and our life, without expectations of how things will turn out and with that finally begin to experience ourselves as we truly are. Light, spontaneous, resilient and strong.: -Doug Keller

It can be easy to think of gratitude as something that we feel in specific situations, rather than something that we actively practice. We may feel grateful and say ‘thanks’ after someone has done something nice for us, but how often do we really step back and take time to be grateful for all that we already have? A great way to ‘actively practice gratitude’ is to start keeping a ‘gratitude journal’. Take a few moments at the end of your day to write down the things that you were grateful for today. Write down those little victories on your yoga mat, like the first time you get into handstand. (more…)

As I watched the news this morning, the stock market took a steep dive downwards within the first five minutes of trading. I am a yoga teacher, not a stockbroker, so I was surprised by the visceral reaction that I had. My heart started to beat faster as if I had just careened down a steep rollercoaster. The truth is that it is hard lately not feel as if we are on a rollercoaster each time we turn on the news.

CNN recently came out with a study that said, not surprisingly, that 8 out of 10 Americans are feeling stressed about their personal finances and the economy. According to the same study, “mounting anxieties led 60 percent of poll respondents to report that they’re feeling angry and irritable, 53 percent reported feeling fatigued and 52 percent said they lie awake at night. As many as 47 percent reported having headaches, 35 percent had upset stomachs and 34 percent experienced muscular tension because of stress.” Clearly, for many of us the volatility and uncertainty of the current economic situation has made us feel like we are walking on shaky ground. (more…)

We are living in a new world, one that challenges our peace of mind and our inner grace. With its frenetic pace and constant state of flux, modern life often feels chaotic, unstable and spiritually starved. In our rush, for new, quicker, better we seem to be missing out on what we fundamentally crave, a calmer, gentler, sweeter and more gracious life. – Alexandra Stoddard

What do we fundamentally crave? What would make our life calmer, gentler and sweeter? It seems clear that the answer is not to be found in the latest Marc Jacobs bag or shiny new Lexus. Perhaps the answer lies in those little things that can be so easy to miss in the onslaught of newer, quicker and better. The everyday joys are nothing new. They don’t change from generation to generation. (more…)