Yoga and a Sick Kid

Remi's pretty used to tagging along with me when she has to. Sometimes it's because she's sick and sometimes it's just because. I'm not sure how many yoga classes she's sat in on, but it's quite a few. She's gotten good at being still and reading a book or keeping herself occupied while I'm leading a class. She's been to all of my sites and has a different routine at each place. When she comes to Rama Lotus she works at reception. At CHEO she plays on her DS. Today she's going to get to do both of those plus figure out something while I'm teaching the police. Being a mom isn't something I do part time - that's my full time gig.

Yoga Exams

I finished marking the exams today of the yoga teacher training. The pile I had to mark anyways. I find it difficult to mark those things because it means I need to make decisions and I don't always like to do that. I can mark yes or no, but when it's more subjective and I have leeway, my students out there will probably be happy to know that I err on the cautious side and give the writer the benefit of the doubt in most cases.

I do like looking at people's handwriting because I don't see much of that these days. Yoga students in general are not great spellers I'm sorry to admit. And I make sure those things don't influence my marking even though if it were up to me, I'd give out marks for penmanship and spelling and grammar.

Grief

I am sad. Sad about the stuff. John said I should go back and get the stuff out of recycling. I'm not going to. I showed him the pictures and read him my blog and he said I should go get it. I said, "no, I want to let it go." He actually put the stuff out on the curb and I asked him to take a picture of it. I took the indoor shots.

It feels really sad and good at the same time. Sad, like I'm crying sad. Like when I saw the pictures of my stuff on the curb, I was looking at an old friend. Maybe this is extra-dramatic, but it's how I feel and it helps explain why I've held on to it for so long. It has meant a lot to me. And it doesn't mean any less to me to let it go.

I'm surprised by much I feel about it. And on the other hand, I must have been feeling this much or else it would have been easy to toss any old time.

It seems to me though, that to let this stuff go is freeing. I'm not sure yet. From what I understand of the yogic teachings and everything, letting it go is the right thing to do. It doesn't always feel that way in the moment. The moment is confusing, like I could hold on to something or that I could do everything I ever wanted in a second. But it takes something to manifest a project or an idea. And not all of my ideas will get played out. Some of them won't.

I used to clean out my closet (while all of these things were neatly stored in boxes in my parents' basement where I didn't ever need to wonder about them) and I'd put stuff in Ian's trunk. He'd keep it there for a few days or a week and then take it to a charity drop off when I didn't know, and if I changed my mind I could go back to his trunk and retrieve it if I was in time. Sometimes I'd go back and get the odd thing. Sometimes it would be too late. Oh well. It always turned out fine either way.

And Remi's seen all my notebooks and said "ooh" and "aah." And John's seen them and though they were neat and that I'm a total pack-rat and maybe we should hang on to my stamp album because there maybe something in there of value.

Don't think I've given it all up, because I haven't. Believe me. I've got teeth, an old retainer, my father's mother's locks of hair and old jewelry. There's many more piles to put out. I did get rid of a Super 8 animation of David Setter shaving off his beard while I was at McGill. That was fun.

Many more opportunities ahead to hang onto stuff and collect and hoard and continue to let go...

(Oh, and I know paper recycling is black box. But I use a blue box for everything and the guys just take it. As long as it's the right stuff for recycling they'll empty whatever colour bin it is.)

On Second Thought...

This is later on after yoga class...and I'm considering renegging. Maybe I won't put the recycling out. How could my precious things be just put out on the curb all night where people might rummage through that stuff? I could get up early and then put it out. Maybe I'll take more pictures. Aaarrgh. BTW, the child's art in that picture is MINE, not Remi's! It's serious. I have her teeth saved and I have mine too!

Hans said I should save my notebooks and stuff from school when I was young. Have it go to my grave with me. NOOOOOO. It's musty. I'm allergic to it! Maybe I should claw back those wedding invitation replies and the bits of wrapping paper and write a story about it all. NOOOOO.

Tara was psyched to get her stuff. I'm glad. She asked me if I was cleaning out and I replied that I'm getting ready to die. And I'm not kidding. I expect to be really old when it finally happens, but sometimes I think if I were in an accident and went now, someone would have to shovel through all of my things not knowing which ones were really important and which ones I just couldn't figure out what to do with. The longer it waits, the longer I'm not taking responsibility for this stuff and putting it off to another day. I'm old enough to know that "one day," "someday," really might be "never." So if I want it to be done, today's the day. So actually, by getting ready to die, I'm saying I'm ready to live!

I guess I'll put out the recycling now...

Letting Go...

I'm taking a break for a minute from what has been occurring for me as an enormous, life-long task of getting rid of my old stuff. But it hasn't really been going on my whole life. I've been collecting and holding on my whole life. Today I'm letting go. I am laughing about how long I have taken to get rid of this "stuff" and I even hauled a bunch of it back inside the house and right now I'm recharging the batteries of my camera so I can take pictures and show you how crazy this has gotten.

I like myself and I think I'm special and have special things to say. I think that one day I will make special projects, maybe even "art" with my old things that are so special. I have special taste, special points of view, even special friends that I've held onto this archive for my whole, entire life. (You'll see when I get to adding the pictures.)

While the battery is charging let me tell you my daughter is not this way. She is so unbelievably UNsentimental that I can hardly believe she comes from me except for the fact that I saved even, get this (don't get grossed out), her UMBILICAL cord with the plastic thing attached, that I am quite certain she's mine. That was just one of the many jewels I came across today while I've been going through the boxes that have been stashed next to my bed for months since my daughter exiled them from her room. She tosses her old drawings and I retrieve them from the recycling bin. She even got rid of her furniture on her last birthday so she could have more space. (She's 9 if you're just meeting me).

I'm 41 now. I realize I'm not that special. I'm not going to make special art with my special momentos. I have beer bottle labels from a beer factory I visited on my German exchange when I was in Grade 12. I found packs of matches from the same trip.






I've got a $2 Canadian bill. That must be worth something. I have my old journal from when I was 8 (I'm hanging on to that). I've got homework books from all through grade school. An Inuit Project from Grade 7. My paper on black holes from Grade 6. It gets funnier. I was a Who freak for some reason when I was 13. I collected articles and back issues of music magazines they were featured in and I saved every single one of them.

I let go of every wedding card and invitation reply from my wedding over 10 years ago. I called Ian before I tossed them all into the recycling bin as there are cards from family and friends who have passed away and he agreed it would be nice to save some of that stuff, so I made a pile for him.

I have saris from living in an ashram and trips to India, and I've been hanging on to them thinking I'm going to decorate with them or something. Tara at Rama Lotus will be the proud new owner of those things later this afternoon when I go over there to teach.

I'm cleaning up today like my life depends on it. Because it does. If I don't clear out this stuff, it will stay there, cluttering my space, clogging the arteries of my life. Continuing to bother me to the point that I shut down and ignore it, ignoring the things that go with it - broken promises and dreams unfulfilled. I want to let that stuff go. When I came across my draft wedding vows to Ian I was moved. I really meant them at the time. When he returned my call I told him I was sorry I hadn't kept my promises to him. It's not the first time I've said it, but it's okay to go back and say sorry again. I thought it was mutual and that doesn't matter - I promised to stay with him no matter what and I didn't. And he's still there and we're still parenting and my life didn't go as I had planned. And that's really okay. And I can still let it all go.

The battery hasn't finished firing up yet, but I'll see what I can get with a few shots.

Tips for Meditation

I'm just listening to an episode from Tapestry at Torsten's suggestion and it's great! It's an interview with Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche who's a special guy living in Halifax. (If the link is stale try looking for the episode January 8.)

One of the things he said early on in the interview was that when people ask him what they should do to help them with their meditation he tells them to clean their kitchen. I thought that was great. I got the impression the interviewer thought he might be kidding, but I was talking out loud to my screen, "No, he means it. It's true!"

My latest homework in my coaching program with Joyce Hardman is to get back to basics and take care of things at home. Tidy up, make sure there's food in the fridge, take care of my space, do laundry. And I know it works. It's systemic as the Rinpoche says. What's happening in one area of your life is happening in other areas. And back in late 2005 when I was actively looking for a relationship, I went to work on being strong on the homefront with the idea that if I make a strong home, I'll find someone who will want to come and stay. That's simplistic, but it's basically what happened.

So now when I'm looking at having projects I'm working on manifest and it seems like there's a block, I look to what's happening at home and I see where I'm out of alignment. I'm putting things back in place at home (washing machine is in place now!) and other projects are getting into gear more smoothly. Check out my latest project, which may interest you or someone you know... www.canadiansretire.com. It's something I'm doing with the help of Mike McCracken, my yoga buddy. I am a bit behind and it's no wonder. I was so overwhelmed at home and feeling down and when I shifted back into taking responsibility for my life, poof, a website got built, things are happening.

So when the Rinpoche tells you to clean your house for a better meditation, listen to the man! He speaks the truth!

Yoga in the Boardroom

It takes all kinds of flexibility to be a yoga practitioner, eh? People think you have to be physically flexible to do yoga - well, you know what I have to say about that. (In case you don't know - I know you don't have to be flexible or feel flexible or anything to do yoga.) Being flexible in other areas is far more gracious and interesting.

In the past I've written about having to do yoga in strange locations - hallways of a hospital, freezing cold floor of a college gym - and it takes something from the group to do yoga in those kinds of places. Today I went to my regular Thursday spot and the place we "usually" have (that's in quotes because it's changed a lot over 5 years) was not available but the group was willing and ready. So we hunted for a spot in the building and came up with the boardroom.

Usually if I'm going to do yoga in a space, we move the chairs and tables to the side so we can have an open space with junk around the sides. Today was the first day that I've ever taught with the table actually in the middle and the people around the sides. We couldn't move the table - it had power cords running through it and was not something we could take apart for yoga. So there we were, some people on one side, some people on the other and kind of in the front and wow. I was really touched by who these people were that they would do yoga like that - because they wanted to do yoga!

And is it ideal? Probably not, or else we'd all be practising yoga that way. But it was another lesson about how it doesn't matter what the externals are - you're still you inside - whether it's on a beach, in a yoga studio, or even on the floor of a boardroom. Your yoga connection can happen anywhere!

Can't Go Anywhere...

I went to Chapters tonight just to get out and go for a little walk. I figured I'd get the latest Scrabble dictionary because the one I have now is rather old. The Scrabble board I'm using has score sheets from my dad's visits in past years and even old ones with Tonk K! (Hey Bud!) So now that John's gotten into the habit of playing Scrabble with me (a very recent shift), I figured I'd get a new dictionary.

I went to where they should be and they're all sold out. Good news. Means lots of people are out there playing Scrabble! All is well...

While I was looking around at what else I could get, I came across Daniel Goleman's latest book on Social Intelligence. And rather than get a large armful of books that I'd like to read, I made a mental note that when I got home, I'd get my fix by looking them up on the internet.

I also got a kick out of Victoria Beckham's book, which was actually really informative, but I restrained myself. Her book was fashion tips and things to keep in mind when you're putting yourself together.

Good thing I'm pretty much "what you see is what you get." It's my turn at the cash and the person behind the counter says, "hi - I took your meditation class and I just wanted to tell you I'm still meditating." She did look familiar to me but I see so many students and sometimes it's just once and it's a long time ago so I can't always be sure. I basically run into people all the time who tell me I was their yoga or meditation teacher. You know - you see me.

I bought a book on jokes and something for Remi and I'll go back in a week or so for the latest Scrabble dictionary.

I came home and looked up Daniel Goleman's site and found this neat article about meditation.

John laughed when he saw what I bought. Maybe next time I'll get that Posh Spice book instead!

Oh, and the next Learn to Meditate workshop is on January 13 at Rama Lotus.

New Year

New years are so arbitrary. It's fun marking time like this but really, it's just another day. We make it mean so much, which is great. It's a great opportunity to reflect and consider and regroup, but it's just something we've created to help us mark time.

I've been thinking a lot about time lately and noticing how really a second is a heartbeat. It's the time between beats of your own heart. So it's not so much that humans have created time, but we ARE time. We are actual clocks walking around. And women, for sure, we're monthly calendars as well as regular time pieces.

So if we are time, that changes the whole problem of "I don't have enough time." It would change to "I'm time for this (or that)," or not. Where are you going to be with your time? How will you be? Just questions...

We label things that are important to us. We give names to relationships and have loads of distinctions for things. I was thinking about that as I was eating snow last night on Major's Hill Park watching the fireworks on New Years Eve with my ex-husband and our daughter and her friend and her friend's dad, who's also my ex's friend. And I was thinking about how I've heard that northern communities have more words for snow than we have, and I figure that's because snow has a big impact on them and so how they describe it will be more important to them. My relationships are important and that's why I've got former husbands and ex-boyfriends and current friends and people that have crossed over in both directions.

So there I was eating snow and I wound up with that taste in my mouth that only seems to come from having eaten snow, and I'm looking at the fireworks and also noticing the reflection the fireworks were making in the windows of the National Gallery and the Chateau Laurier, and I'm just loving my life. Loving how it's turned out, loving who's been in it with me, who's in it now, and what's happening. And even though people stress me out and bother me in general, I'm also really grateful and impressed with who people are, with what they go through and live with and how really amazing people are. And I notice the names I've given to different relationships because they're important to me, mother, daughter, partner, and different names, because I say so. And we say so, because it's important to us. Our society is concerned with relationships and so we have lots of ways to describe them.

And time is important to us, so we mark it in different ways and celebrate at different times even if we don't feel like it. As humans passing through this plane/sphere/whatever it is, we like to label the things that are important and so even though the New Year may be actually pretty arbitrary, especially to birds and cats and rocks and planets, it's important to us. And so we mark it. Happy New Year!

The Party's Over

It's official. The party's over. My fat pants have gotten tight. I've definitely had a lot of fun - eating, drinking, sleeping, playing - and it seems like not much else is getting done! I don't really worry about it but then it is on my mind. I'll have to go out and buy new clothes if I don't rein myself in. I really don't like going out and buying new clothes. I'd rather not.

This has been a wild year. I started out miserable and sad (and skinny) but determined to have things turn out and they did! I'm ending it fat and happy and purring with how good life is. And I know it's not the circumstances that count - they really don't - but they're fun to monitor and play with if you're not too attached. I wasn't too attached this year and I remained committed to what I thought I wanted and I wound up with something that really pleases me.

It's Hard to Be Quiet!

I had one of the best days EVER today.

I LOVE le Nordik. Many of you know that. If you haven't gone, please, please, please, take yourself to le Nordik. It's like 12 minutes from my house. I can't stand it, it's soooo great. Anyways, one of the things that I find interesting about le Nordik is that people are asked to be quiet. Like don't talk. Whisper if you have to in certain areas, but in others, simply be quiet.

Do you think people are quiet? They are so not quiet. We can't stand to sit there with our people and just BE. We need to chat. We need to chit chat and small talk and giggle and have fun and that's great. But what would be awesome is to take a few minutes to just be quiet and be awake. So people are at le Nordik completely ignoring the requests to be quiet. Me too. And I'm noticing that I'm not complying with the request and just noticing. And it makes me think about how hard it is to do something so simple.

Meditating is one of the easiest things you could ever do. And it works! And yet, people find it so difficult. So hard to sit still for 10 minutes, half an hour, or even just five minutes! We won't do it. Some people do and that's great. I think of it like brushing your teeth. Once you get in the habit of doing it, you'll do it on your own no matter what and many of us will do it more than once or twice a day and you can't stop us! But it can take years to get into the habit - my daughter's 9 and I'm still reminding her to brush her teeth...

There's a show on Tapestry that I'm listening to about meditation. If you have some time and would like to take a listen, here you go.

Oh, and after the spa experience, we had lunch at Les Fougeres. Wow. And the day continued and included a nap and I must say, what a treat it was!

Yoga is a Privilege

Yoga is a privilege. When I forget that I am losing sight of what's going on. I think it's a right, I think people already know and just don't do it. So many people don't even know. It's a privilege to know about yoga and to be able to practise it is a true honour. Not everyone has that.

Keep Up Your Practice!

It's Christmas Day and a lot of people may be skipping their usual practice today. Don't skip it altogether! It's okay to do an abbreviated practice - and even if it's delayed, like you do it tomorrow - but don't go a few weeks without your practice if you can help it.

If you didn't get my yoga DVD for Christmas, there's loads of free stuff on the web. Search on youtube or find something you like to inspire you to keep practising!

Peace, out.

Nothing's Wrong With Christmas

You know, for years I've listened to this story society tells about how Christmas has gone all commercial and how it's lost whatever it used to have that made it all warm and fuzzy waaaay back in the day. How it's all about buying presents now rather than what "really" matters and people are stressed out and blah blah blah. I'm not buying it anymore.

Christmas is a time to be generous. If we were normally generous people, being generous at Christmas wouldn't be bad at all, in fact it would be a celebration. But the fact is, most of us are not generous. We think we're generous types, we'd like to be generous, but really when it comes down to it in our day-to-day interactions, we maybe think about being generous and then we're not. We do not put out as a society. In fact Canadians have been measured to be some of the least generous as a population when it comes to giving to charity.

What happens at Christmas is that we're asked to be generous and it hurts. What comes up is where we are not generous and having that revealed to ourselves can be painful. Maybe we don't spend our money appropriately throughout the year so we could be giving back along the way so it wouldn't bite so hard in December. If we were doing random acts of kindness and springing Our Favourite Things on our friends in June, doing a little something-something in December would be natural and fun.

And it's not about the stuff. Our lives are so full of work and busy-ness that to spend more time at Mom's or to visit our relatives or attend parties occurs for us as massive to-dos. But if we've been visiting regularly and hanging out throughout the year, then Christmas isn't a chore, but another opportunity to get together and play!

Nothing's wrong with Christmas. And nothing's wrong with people either. People are people. Most of us don't like each other and don't really want to be with each other once we're adults. (I'm exaggerating, but not much.) We don't want to lend a helping hand or do something extra that might cause us to have to give up something - an episode of a show, a few minutes of sleep, a few bucks.

And I don't believe for a second that this is a modern problem or that there's anything new about it. If we could hear from people in cultures across space and time, there would be a grumbling about whatever the name of the holiday is or the event is that asks us to be generous. If you've been generous all year, Christmas is a blast. If you haven't, Christmas is a drag. Check it out!

So Christmas really is a pose. A pose that stretches the muscles of generosity and kindness. For many of us, those are pretty tight muscles as we've been contracted all year long. Christmas asks us to stretch in this way, so my suggestion is find the places you feel the most and breathe into them. And then add this stretch to your regular practice so you can feel more comfortable in it. Watch what happens!

Enjoy the rest of your Christmas shopping!

Yoga as an Investment in Comfort

I've said this before, but it's time to say it again. Practising yoga reguarly can really allow you to be as comfortable as possible. There are other things that may come in the way of your being comfortable, but practising yoga can help you be as comfy as you can.

Someone asked me after a long car trip if I had some exercises for them to do so they didn't have a sore back anymore. Sure. Do a regular yoga practice. That's the exercise for a sore back. Not certain poses, not just specialized stretches, but a full-out, all-round practice. Regularly. Once a week, but twice a week makes an even bigger difference. More than 5, you'll have less noticible benefits perhaps.

I was listening to Dr. Geoff Outerbridge in the last class of the teacher training, he said that the period after Christmas is his busiest time. What happens is people take a couple of weeks off of their regular practices of fitness and training and then their bodies go out of shape faster than they get in shape and people return to the level of training they had before they went on holidays. The result is more injuries, hence more need for the chiro!

So even though my Tuesday evening classes will not be offered for 2 weeks in a row, it's important to keep your practice up. Keep stretching and working so that your body doesn't begin to hibernate with the season! Make your investment in your practice and it will pay you back generously.

Loose Ends

When I listen to my story of what I have to do and how practically impossible it's going to be to get it all done I think it's just me.

Get winter tires (I waited until the last minute and now it's practically too late for that and I make myself wrong for not getting them sooner and my punishment is going to be that I drive in my all seasons all winter.)
Get a new washing machine (The guys arrived yesterday with the new one but they weren't allowed to install it because mine are stacked and they checked with their boss and they couldn't make an exception so we had them take it back and called Sears to get a refund. So now I have piles of clothes and will have to go to a laundromat - might not sound like a big deal but I am so not ready to go there. So I make Sears wrong and I'm going to show them by buying a washing machine someplace else like that's going to fix it.)
Buy and wrap Christmas presents that are affordable and meaningful (I'm so behind and on top of it my mom and my fiance's birthdays are both on Christmas Eve. And I refuse to get it done in a mall in one shot.)
Get my Christmas cards done, like really (I did start and some are close to having stamps on. I make up for it by writing fast and having Remi scribble something so at least people know I tried but I feel like a fraud because I didn't say much of anything.)
Clean up the house so people can come over and I'm not mortified (This hits hard at this time of year because people are really coming over and I get found out about how really disorganized I am. I want to try and hide that so I push more stuff into my bedroom making it a place I barely want to be and then we just survive in there until after the holidays when I can spread the mess out again.)

I know you have lists too of things that are your personal pile of loose ends and unfinished business. Christmastime tends to highlight all that kind of stuff as it asks us to pack in more things to do inside of our already tight schedules.

I'm going to breathe, tackle the things on the list that are important to me, relax around the things that are not going to get done, and inside of all of that, be present to the people in my world who may be going through something very similar. Perhaps we'll be able to look at each other and take a rest in each other's gaze. ;)

Transformation

The point of yoga is transformation, not physical fitness. Yoga invites us to know our true selves and let go of the dreams, the plays, the stories about how we think things are and be present to how it really is.

Sometimes we get fit doing yoga but being mentally and emotionally fit is even more important. Studying yoga is quite different than reading about yoga. Studying yoga enhances one's physical yoga practice by deepening one's knowledge so as a person is doing yoga, they're more aware of what's happening and what they're doing. Reading about yoga doesn't bring you an experience of yoga like studying yoga does.

The yoga teacher training addresses this and teaches a lot about the yogic scriptures, but the most current study of yoga that I can find is offered through Landmark Education. They don't call it that, but I recognize the yoga in it. And some people think yoga is weird and don't want to do it and there's lots of different kinds of yoga and if you're reading this chances are you don't think yoga is that weird. Just like how yoga used to be weird and people had stories of levitation and gurus and incense and stuff, anyone going to a class in Ottawa knows it's pretty normal. Same thing with Landmark Education. I'm talking about it a lot right now because I'm immersed in it by choice at the moment and I'm getting some feedback from people who haven't taken any courses but think they know something about it from reading about it. It's like reading about yoga. Not the same as doing it. Once you get into it, it is so not weird. Or the weird parts are not bad but are actually fun.

Anyways, if you're someone I've invited to come and see what I'm up to and you happen to have read stuff about what I'm doing and you've become skeptical, please consider you're not really getting the picture by the stuff you've read. And yoga is maybe not for everyone - although I can't imagine who couldn't benefit from some style of yoga - the work of transformation offered through Landmark Education may not be for everyone, but again, I can't imagine who couldn't benefit from this education. I haven't met anyone who did it who didn't like it. Really.

Just like the yoga practice we do helps us in other areas of our lives, help we're going to need over the holidays, the tools you get from Landmark Education will help in other areas of your life. Really.

Someone said recently they would like me to offer coaching. I think as a coach my suggestion would be to go do the Landmark Forum, get the tools, and then we can start our work. Without "joining" anything, but rather having a set of tools that so far that I've only become really familiar with through the study and practice of yoga and are brought current and totally accessible through the education offered at Landmark Education. If you have more, know of some others, let me know. I'd love to hear about them!

Inspired

I came back from the weekend in NYC quite inspired. That's one of the benefits of doing the training. And I find that my life is just always going better when I'm doing one of the Landmark Education workshops. The inspiration seems to carry over into other aspects of my life.

I ran across this page tonight and I wanted to post it. In the posting from August 6 there's a video section and in the fifth one down there's a short interview with a doctor named Bert Peterson. He came yesterday to share about his leadership role in the Self Expression and Leadership Program. Blew me away.

He is a surgeon and in his FREE TIME is a leader in the Self Expression and Leadership Program. He has opened up clinics in the Caribbean and in Africa and was really inspiring. I thought the course I am taking took up too much of my time (at the beginning - I'm over it), but he is just one example of someone living a really big life. Check it out.

Travel Pose

Sometimes we do poses that aren't the kind we get taught in a class on a mat. We may not even know that we're doing these poses. But if you step back and consider some of the things you do as yoga poses, you can make adjustments so you have proper alignment and you can pay attention to your breathing, so that rather than being drained by what you're doing, you can actually be energized.

For instance, many of us hold the pose of sitting at a desk for a long time. Today I'm going to hold the pose of sitting in a car for 10 hours (hopefully not more than that but with the weather as it is, who knows?). I'm not going to pretend that I get energized by 10-hour car rides, especially in snowy conditions. But I'm going to be open to the possibility that I could pay attention to my posture while I'm in the car and notice my breathing and perhaps when I arrive at my destination I won't be completely drained and exhausted.

This is the third weekend in my Introduction Leaders Program through Landmark Education and I'm excited. I'm also a bit bummed because it's in NYC and it would be fun to shop and see sights and more than that, visit Mindi in Connecticut, but the course is so tight that the breaks are really just long enough to eat something and get back to the workshop. So even though I'm in NYC, I could be anyplace...

New Work Out

Today I got what feels like a total body work-out by walking from my house to my yoga class in Hull in my heavy winter boots in the snow. Wow. On top of it I got lots of sensations on my skin as my face felt like it was being slapped by the wind and when I finally warmed up as I was teaching the class, my ears were burning. It was fun.

So I was on my way to teach the class and I decided to walk, precisely so I could get some exercise instead of driving my car there, and along the way I noticed someone I thought I recognized. We were waiting for the light to turn at Sussex and Murray and sure enough, she had been in my yoga class yesterday for the first time. So that was neat and we walked across the bridge to Quebec together. Along the way someone was heading the other direction and she had taken the yoga teacher training that graduated this spring. After my class was over, I walked past the Museum of Civilization and another yoga person waved hi.

There is a lot of yoga going on in Ottawa/Gatineau. And I feel very comfortable here in this city!