The Disconnect

I just sent out a newsletter today for August. I’m excited for some new changes and things that aren’t even on the calendar yet.

Sometimes I struggle with translating the things I want to offer as a Yoga Therapist and Yoga Teacher, into a way that my students connect with. Letting the inspirations I’ve had over the last few months translate into new classes, workshops, or groups.

Generally, I try to keep the toxic positivity away from my thoughts, life, and practice. I’m telling you this, because it feels like we are living through a time which is rife with fear, manipulation, and demotivation. I feel it. I swim through it in my own mind and life.

There is a disconnect, between what I feel coming in from the outside and what I want. I get excited to offer new things, and then I get overwhelmed, or scared, or demotivated.

Today I was tuned into a new resource. I picked a podcast episode from The Biology of Trauma podcast with Dr. Aimie Apigian. She said, in reference to a trauma response, a shutting down…. “We disconnect when we realize we don’t have the power to change something that is painful in our lives.”

Just wrapping words around this idea in this powerful way is right on the edge of shutting me down. It so smacks of lived truth.

My new task for myself is to acknowledge when I disconnect and see if there is a way to relate differently to the things I can’t change. Or if putting more resources into doing, being, and sharing the things I can change helps keep me going when I run up against a painful thing I can’t change.

Let me know if you want to join my group, code name “Staying Connected.”

Time Flies - Plus Check It Out, I Was A Podcast Guest

Just a moment ago, I looked to see when was the last time I posted to the blog. I’m not shocked, and probably you won’t be shocked, but I haven’t posted since November 4, 2024.

Time does fly, doesn’t it? I have nothing really to say about why I haven’t blogged since November. I’ve just been finding my way. A million thanks to those who have made it into the studio. Getting to work with you always helps me connect to what is important to me.

Just a few weeks ago, Michelle Aalbers of Jai Dee, Choose Yourself, and Hypothetically Intentional (what a giggle worthy name, right?) helped me step out of my comfort zone, by being a guest on her podcast, called Hypothetically Intentional. It is available most places you get podcasts. The episode is called “Calm Down” and thanks to the connection and friendship we’ve shared for years, it was a joy to do. Once we got started, I didn’t need to calm down at all. If you’re an Apple person, click here. Have a listen and share it with whoever you think might benefit from it or enjoy it. [If you’ve missed my giggle lately, go have a listen.]

Because of the extremely positive feedback and questions, Michelle and I recorded two more sessions this week. Not sure when they will be out, but I’ll let you know.

In the months to come, I will endeavor to post more. Like / Comment / Share. You know the drill.

I’ll see you at the studio.

The Dream

This morning, I had a very vivid dream.

I was biking on a country highway near my grandmother’s house in Pennsylvania. Alone, at night.  No lights.  

It was tough going, as there are many land features in Pennsylvania. Sometimes I had to stand up to get some momentum going, just so my muscles could keep the pedals turning.

Add to this, that I was very tired. So tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I told myself, “It’s fine, between the rumble strip on one side, and gravel on the other, you’ll know if you get off your path.”

It was chilly. Exhilarating. Exhausting. In hindsight, terrifying. I had no safety vest, no lights. The woods were dark. The sky full of stars. It was hard work, but I kept moving.

How like life.

I don’t know what’s coming over the next hill. I am apparently not energized enough to begin looking for all the potential danger around me. Somehow I find little bits of wonder, little triumphs. Just going to keep pedaling and hoping.

Movement Is The Stuff Of Life

Movement is the stuff of life.

When we move, we keep all our systems vital; muscles, bones, organs, and especially our brains.  

Yoga is a blend of moving and stillness. A symphony of finding our wholeness while moving our bodies through space. A connection in real time between stillness in mind and body and the frantic pace of the world.

Movement is change is the motion of existence. Change is consistently hard, even when it is for the best possible reasons. For the greatest possible benefit, to the greatest number of people.

What will it take for you to let yourself be moved? What about finding a moment on your mat, to be moved? A perspective change from what needs to change, to being open to the vastness of possibility?

Not a Coincidence

Yesterday would have been my mom’s 82 birthday. Cancer sucks and Pancreatic Cancer is like the sick cherry on top of the sucky sundae.

My car is being repaired and I found myself at home all day. I was going to make the kids muffins, but didn’t have the chocolate chips I needed. So I decided to make a coffee cake. Something I’ve done maybe 5 times in my life.

At 1 a.m. last night I was wide awake for no good reason. As my brain spun back down to sleep I realized I had made a cake that I associate with my mom on her birthday. It turned out really well. Much better than the frozen ones or box mix cakes we used to make her as kids. And it wasn’t a coincidence.

Happy birthday, Mom. Hope you liked your cake.

A Life's Work

“Don’t make your life’s work of It.”

Did your parents say that?  Mine did.  Both of them.  A lot.  Long before I knew what a life’s work was or what my life’s work would be, I was picking up ideas that I shouldn’t waste my time on other stuff.

That’s not what my parents meant.  They meant, “Hurry up!”

That’s OK.  Now that I’m on the other side of the parent/child relationship, I’ve come to really appreciate that sometimes what I say is not what is heard or understood.  Often times, for the betterment of my people. 

Today, I broke out the nice, heavy, padded chairs I used in the old studio to teach Chair Yoga and enhance Restorative Yoga.  I lovingly cleaned all the chrome.  I took my time and vacuumed them fully.  Then I spot cleaned the fabric on them.

On the third round of spot cleaning, waiting for them to dry, and spot cleaning again, I thought to myself, “I’m literally making my life’s work of this.”

That’s OK.  It feels right to be making my life’s work of something now.

I’m very excited to bring Chair Yoga back to the studio.  If you’re looking for a gentle start to yoga, a gentle way to restart yoga, taking care of an injury or your joints, or looking for a fun way to improve strength, flexibility, and mobility -- Chair Yoga is something you should try.

Answers and Questions

Answers and Questions

I’ve spent some time in my life looking for answers.  I’ve looked outside, inside, and all around the house.  There was a time I thought meditation would bring it all to me.  All I had to do was sit still enough.

Maybe that’s true.  Maybe meditation is an answer to “how can I get more answers?”

These days what I find is that my dreams, if I can remember them, have answers and many more questions.

Last night I dreamed I found myself working in a really poorly stocked kitchen, that was pretty disgustingly dirty.  I had made plans to watch season 3 of The Bear, but had not see any episodes of it in quite some time.  So probably the tension, disgust, and frustration was not related to the show.

As I worked away in the less than pristine conditions, I realized it was a home kitchen.  My home kitchen.  I was making the best of the situation.  What I used to call my super power, and recently realized is actually a lingering trauma response.  

I noticed a crack between a wall and a cabinet.  I looked closer, shined a light inside and inside found a dark, deep and creepy space.  I ignored what I found and kept on working.

I left the kitchen to do something else and when I came back, the roll of paper towels was spinning away while the towels disappeared into the widening gap and down the scary dark cave.

It is no mystery that I have a looming fear of what lies below our cracks in our world.  I don’t need a professional to decipher this particular nocturnal vision.  But I take heart in a few of the other details.  I don’t need things to be perfect to keep going.  I’ll keep showing up, and doing what I can.

Knowing that I can count on me, it means something.

Then tonight, when I was making pizza for dinner, a fault line opened up in me.  It’s been a while and the temperatures and humidity are different.  I got the first pizza onto the peel and then couldn’t get it off into the oven.  I scraped it off with a spatula.  That is not good form.  When the timer went off, I went to get it out and it was stuck.  I used the spatula to scrape as much as I could off the 500 degree pizza steel.  While the cheese melted onto the oven rack and the bottom of the oven.

When I got as much as I could safely get out of the oven at that temperature, I closed the oven and turned it off.  I then went and told my husband I could not make pizza tonight.  As I cried.  A lot.

Funny, cracks opening up in the kitchen in my dreams . Cracks opening up in me in my actual kitchen.

The husband went to pick up Chipotle and the kids came and gave me big hugs.  No matter what you do, not everything is going to work out according to your plans.  No matter what I do, not everything is going to work out according to my plans.  It’s still ok.  It will still be OK.

Time, Perspective

"We see the world and things not as they are but as we are." ~ Immanuel Kant, 18th-century German philosopher

Recently the internet brought to my attention the fact that 1918 is as far from 1973 as 2024.  This awareness brought to mind a memory of spending time with my grandparents. It was the 1970’s and I saw them through a child’s eyes.  I saw them only as “old people.”  People I loved and valued, to be sure.  But as though their whole existence was them at their advanced age.  At the same time I perceived my parents as middle aged, my grandparents as elderly, and perceived myself simply as “me”.  

It was impossible to see myself as anything other than what I was, when I was aware of being at all.  It was impossible for me to think of my parents or grandparents as ever having existed as anything other than how I was then experiencing them.

Later, when I was in college, I got to know some of them more as people.  We talked about their childhoods, their hopes and dreams, but not so much about their experiences of change, growth, or aging.  I wish we’d gotten around to that.

Now I’m older than my parents were, closer to the age of my grandparents in the 1970’s.  Still experiencing myself as simply “me” and not a particular age.  As I somehow find my way toward being elderly, I’m working on remaining open.  Open to the possibility of seeing things not only from my limited experience and perspective.  Being aware of when my perspective is limited, and expanding my acquaintance and knowledge beyond little old me.

Don’t know if I’ll ever be “one”, or even experience a tiny piece of what it means to see the world in more than binaries.  But I’m willing to keep trying.