The longer I teach and practice yoga, the gentler my teaching and practice become. I tell my yoga friends, “pretty...
“It takes boldness, even audacity, to step out of our habitual patterns and experiment with a quality like kindness...
One of the conversations we have been having in our current Yoga Teacher Training is about the value or detriment of mindfulness hitting the mainstream. When Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced the word and concept of mindfulness to health care in the 70’s, with the creation of the Stress Reduction Clinic at...
“When we truly rest in awareness, our experience is spacious and intimate, without defenses. With it arises compassion; we feel...
“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age...
Photo courtesy of Liz Gill Where can you pause? For me, it started in the fall. I had just dropped my kids off at school. I was walking out of the playground, and I had to stop. The clouds were spectacular that chilly fall morning – streaking across the sky...
I’ve meditated at the pool with my kids, believe it or not. (Don’t worry—they are old enough to swim on their own, around lifeguards.) Several times this summer, I was at the wading pool and sat quietly in the water. Closing my eyes, listening to the water falling around me, the sounds of the water splashing, feeling the sunlight warm on my eyelids. Swaying gently when other kids are running in the water around me. I’ve meditated at the wave pool, and it’s a beautiful image now, the ruffled waves coming into and crashing, the pull of the water as it receded. I’ve even taken time to meditate on the ferry. Those seconds stretch into minutes, the minutes into time without measure.
Normally, I’d be all about the homework. I am one of those people who’s ridiculously happy to be a lifelong student. I have 2 grad school degrees, for goodness’ sake. I miss taking classes besides yoga. But I have to admit that the MBSR homework is a struggle.
Transitions may be the most important part of a yoga practice. At least if we are present to them. Consider the transitions between the poses. Often we don’t think much about them, we are more focused on the posture itself. But pay attention, and there is more happening than we...
November 2022 It’s a roller coaster, isn’t it – being alive during this time? It’s true that things...
Photo courtesy of Liz Gill “When times are uncertain, difficult, fearful, full of change, they become the perfect place...
This Monday, I dropped my daughter off at her first day of kindergarten. Weeks before she stepped into her new school, and all the way up until that morning, she was telling me in no uncertain terms that she did NOT want to go to Kindergarten, and that another year...