"with a lighter heart"

Three of them showed up to class today, heavy with baby: her fourth, her first, her second. Outside the air is thick with humidity, the day dense with clouds. Inside the studio I just turned on the AC and the room is slow to cool. The heaviness is visible on each of their faces; each of them has traveled a hard week before making it in front of me to the mat, and they all express how happy they are to "just be here." I see the relief echo in their bodies. We move slowly, steadily, breathe deeply, over and over releasing what isn't serving us. I wasn't sure it was a good idea to teach a class so close to the trip, the thing that weighs heavy on my mind, but once again being in the teacher's seat is a welcome remedy. To be present to their concerns relieves me of my own. To listen to them allows me to forget myself. And as has so often been the case, the lesson I teach is the one I most need: that, in the end, you cannot prepare for every eventuality, you can only prepare yourself. For their final relaxation I rubbed the massage oil into my hands, releasing the fragrance of rose and geranium close to their nose, each in turn, and applied a gentle touch to their necks and forehead. I went home, and, later in the day, began packing with what I like to think is a lighter heart.


Linking up with Christina Rosalie's Just One Paragraph.

what I already know

When I was pregnant with Silas, I taught up to six yoga classes a week, and had to drive nearly two hours round-trip to the studio where I taught most of these. I even taught a class the very morning my water broke! It was exhausting, both physically and emotionally. I also managed to attend only two or three Prenatal classes the entire time. I was determined, with this second pregnancy, to not put myself in a position when I had to give so much of my care and energy to others, and to make sure I got to receive the nourishment I need.

My teaching load this time around has been much, much lighter, and I taught my last class a couple of weeks ago, at 32 weeks. And while I have only made it to one Prenatal class in a studio, through the magic of the Internet, I have been able to have wonderful teachers hold space for me, keep my practice fresh and inspired, and provide me with that wisdom and nourishment that is so beneficial for me at this time.

I've been making my way back to the mat in a more committed way over the last few weeks. This pregnancy has been tricky for movement due to aggravated issues with my low back, hips and pelvis (not to mention an adorable but energy-sapping toddler to look after!) But about a month ago I got fitted for a maternity support belt that has literally changed my life. I'm still tight and achy but overall feel about 75% better. So I have been making yoga my top priority again, after months of shying away from the mat because my pelvis felt too unstable, and I am loving it.

Late last week I moved through a practice led by Stephanie Snyder on Yoga Glo, and was deeply struck by her simple but profound words. She offered, during the opening mediation, the following blessing:

Remember that you have everything that you need. You can do this. There is nothing to fear. You will be your strongest, most beautiful, most powerful, and your most graceful self when you give birth.

Her words resonated with me not because they carried a brand-new insight, but because they reminded me afresh of what I already know: that I hold within me all the resources necessary to grow, birth, and mother this baby with beauty, strength and grace. It calls to mind the affirmation with which I close my Prenatal yoga classes, and which I use myself to end my time on the mat:

I hold within me the strength and wisdom to birth in harmony with nature in the best possible way for me and my baby.

This is one of the reasons for which time on the mat is so crucial for me these days. By spending time moving and breathing mindfully, in fully inhabiting my body for those brief, dedicated moments, I remind myself of the strength, beauty and openness that I already possess. Slipping into Warrior 2 or Pigeon pose is not unlike opening the door to one's house and stepping inside: there is a recognition, a sense of belonging, in coming home.

I already have everything that I need. Just as I am, I am enough.

It is easy to forget, in the midst of the myriad small failures that make up an ordinary day as a mother, the truth about our best, shiniest selves. It is tempting to think that there are improvements to be made, ways to be better at what we do, at who we are.

But we are never not that shiny self. Sometimes the truth of who we are is obscured, the way the sun is sometimes covered with clouds, but a short flight up above the cloud line reminds us that the sun is always shining, even when it's dark and dreary below. In the same way, we need reminders--like time on the mat, or good books, or great friends--to remind us of what we know to be true.

There is no becoming, no there to get to. There is only remembering what already is.


::  The lovely flowers illustrating today's post were given to me at my blessingway this past weekend, by my doula and friend, who always reminds me of what I already know. ::

the yoga mutt theory of parenting philosophy

I started practicing yoga at an Iyengar studio. Iyengar is a rather rigorous and precise style of yoga, which suited me and soothed me as a beginning student. It was easy within the well-defined boundaries of the style to know what to expect of myself, what to expect of the practice. It was easy to know what was right and what was wrong.

In another studio in another city, when I began my yoga teacher training a few years later, I was exposed to different styles of teaching and practicing. Initially, I resisted these new influences. I resisted the notion that yoga could me more about what it felt like to be inside my body than about molding my body into these classical shapes. But eventually, I became more and more attracted to the kinds of teachers who are, as my lovely friend and teacher Lizzie describes herself, "yoga mutts." These were teachers who are earnest students of the art and science of yoga, who explore the breadth and the depth of the practice, and create a style which suits their own bodies, with their own unique challenges and gifts and idiosyncrasies, and which feels wonderfully personal and genuine.

As I grew more confident in my own practice, and began to learn more about my body, and what benefits my own unique structure and what doesn't, I became more and more comfortable letting go of "the way things should be" and began investigating more deeply the question of  "how do I want to feel?" I, too, became proud to call  myself a yoga mutt.

Then, one day, I became pregnant for the first time. And as I was cast in the utter darkness of fear, anxiety and doubt that are the hallmarks of first-time parenthood, I began searching for a philosophy, a theory, about the right way to parent. I found the comfort and certainty I was looking for in attachment parenting. Yes--baby-wearing, co-sleeping, feeding on demand, these were for me. They made sense. They appeared to my untrained eye to be a guarantee of happiness for my baby and competency for me. Armed with my books and my Moby, I felt ready to become a mama.

When Silas came into the world, his birth was unlike anything I could have imagined, and was the farthest thing from what I wanted for him, for me. (I plan to share his birth story here next week, as it is almost the second anniversary of the event.) His birth left me reeling and broken. But still, I carried on with the plan, co-slept with him, wore him day in and day out, held him close for his marathon naps/nursing sessions. And things appeared to be working great.

Until they didn't. Once I was forced to admit that co-sleeping didn't work for me, left me crazed and sleep-deprived, my first thought was not that the method had failed me, but that I had failed the method. It was a long and painful road to letting go of the way I think things ought to be to easing into a way of doing and being that felt right for me and my family. It took long months of exploring what it meant to be a mama before I could learn to trust my instincts.

I think it is natural, when we first begin to learn lifelong practices like yoga or parenthood, to look for certainties, for ways to evaluate whether we are doing things wrong or right. I think it is very difficult at first to allow the measures of progress and success to come from inside ourselves, from our hearts and guts and feelings, rather than from outside, from what the experts are saying. But as we mature as students and practitioners, we begin to develop that internal locus of rightness. Only it isn't so much a measure of right-vs-wrong, but of right-here, right-now, right-for-me, right-for-us.

As the weeks of this pregnancy flow by and we slowly prepare to welcome another child into our hearts and our lives, my husband and I are having conversations about how we'll do things differently this time. For one thing, we know that we won't know anything until this little one shows himself and his personality. And we know that we ourselves will be very different, with over two years of parenting under our belts, and a toddler to tend to, also. We are a lot more comfortable with the idea of being parenting philosophy mutts. This time, we won't be afraid, right from the beginning, to experiment until it feels right.

:: To clarify: I do not intend in any way to imply that there is anything implicitly wrong with Iyengar yoga, attachment parenting, or co-sleeping. Only that I have come to know, for myself, through trial and error, that these were not the most beneficial modalities for me at the time. And I still love my Moby. ::

remaking my mornings

What matters is simply this: your intent to claim the day with gusto and bravery and longing. What matters is waking up and asking, What can I be today?, and then devoting a small handful of moments to this task of wonderment. That is all.  -Christina Rosalie, A Field Guide to Now

If you've been reading here for a while, you know that remaking and tweaking my morning routine is something I do periodically, and with great enthusiasm. I am a devoted morning person--just the word itself fills me with this fresh sense of possibility. Also, morning is the time of day when one drinks coffee. But more than that--I believe that an intentional, well-orchestrated morning is the key to setting the tone for the day ahead. And when one is, as I am, the pregnant  stay-at-home mama of a busy toddler, setting a positive and beneficial tone for the day is absolutely necessary.

With the start of the new year, and on the heels of ten days of major and delicious holiday laziness, my mornings were in need of a reboot. Thinking back on a few of my favorite resources to inspire intentional mornings, I've been contemplating what the essential building blocks of a nourishing and energizing morning might be for me at this stage.

Left to my own devices, here is how a morning would go for me: get out of bed, join the little man in the living room. He'll quickly get engaged with his horde of Matchbox cars while I get myself a hot drink, and sit down to knit a few rows. (I usually try to be good and start with a cup of hot lemon water or honey ginger lemon tea before making coffee.) Once I've knit to my heart's content, I'll pick up a book by either Pema or Maezen, or some poetry, and read for a while. Then I'll make coffee, and break out my Moleskine and scribble out some morning pages. After all that I'll be starving, so I'll eat.

So what we're looking at is a cozy, nourishing, but completely sedentary morning. Nothing in there to get the blood pumping, to get energized. As I was reflecting on 2012 and planning for 2013 over the last few weeks, more movement has been a major theme that's come up over and over. Since I believe in using the morning to set the foundation for the whole day, it makes sense to make movement a priority starting at first light.

This is how I came to unroll my mat uncharacteristically early yesterday morning, in a wedge of light in the living room, still in my PJs. I put on a cheery music mix (also key to this year's ambitions: more cheery music) and got moving. It was pretty boring pregnant mama yoga stuff, especially since I've entered the stage when it feels like my pelvis will split apart at any moment, but I tell you, it made all the difference in my day. Generating that kind of energy early on lasted me through a whole day of errands and housekeeping alone with a whiny toddler. All it took was just one morning's session to make me a believer that this is what I need to do.

Since this is the time of year for setting resolutions, let this be mine: each morning, I will devote 10-20 minutes to mindful movement on the mat. My plan is to share an image each morning on Instagram with the hashtag #morningonthemat. I would LOVE for you to play along with me. You don't have to commit to doing it everyday, but if you do unroll your mat one of these mornings, won't you share your view? Here's to more mindful movement in 2013.

the yoga of motherhood

I am honored to be a contributor to the Kind Kindred series over at Kind Over Matter today. Here is an excerpt from my post, which is about how the lessons of softening and yielding in yin yoga are an excellent preparation for motherhood:

As we learn through yoga to welcome all elements of our experience into the embrace of awareness, something almost magical happens: we stop fighting against what we don’t want. We soften right into the middle of it. We welcome our tight hips and our self-doubt as part of our reality in the moment, and we come back to the ever-faithful steadiness of the breath. When we stop fighting we find peace.

Please pop on over to read the whole post! Thanks for having me, Amanda, it was such a pleasure to write for your awesome site!

book review & giveaway!: the mindful way through pregnancy

The main message I try to pass on to my prenatal yoga students is that mindfulness practices, such as conscious breathing, yoga and meditation, are invaluable in supporting and serving their unique needs as they grow into motherhood. So I was very excited to find out last month that one of my favorite writers and teachers, Susan Piver, has edited a new book, The Mindful Way Through Pregnancy: Meditation, Yoga and Journaling for Expectant Mothers, which includes an essay by yet another favorite, Karen Maezen Miller. I  immediately ordered a copy, eager to see if this could be a resource I would want to recommend to my students.

The Mindful Way Through Pregnancy contains six essays, with topics ranging from Nurturing Your Body With Yoga, to Bonding With Your Baby, to Calming Fear. Coupled with each essay is a specific mindfulness practice, among them Basic Breath Awareness, Journaling, and two different meditation practices. Accompanying the book is a CD of four practices, beautifully led by Susan Piver (whom I love for the wonderful guided meditations she offers through her Open Heart Project.)

In her introduction, Piver writes that "mindfulness doesn't necessarily mean peacefulness. It refers instead to the willingness to be with ourselves as we are from moment to moment, whether that self is the picture of blissful maternity or of something a bit more, say, cranky or fearful. The material in this book is about embracing the experience of pregnancy--and as with all embraces, it begins with an opening, which is a synonym for mindfulness."

This theme of opening up to the experience of pregnancy, whether happy or fearful or just plain miserable, is one that runs through the whole book, and is a message I would have benefited from greatly when I was pregnant with my son. My experience of being pregnant was so far from what I had hoped or expected it would be: I didn't feel blissful or happy, but mostly cranky and achy and struggling deeply to make or feel a connection to the little bean growing in my belly. I wish I had had this book to walk me through my first pregnancy. When I despaired that my experience was far from the deep spiritual one I'd envisioned, I would have loved to read Anne Cushman's words: "What makes pregnancy a spiritual practice is not the kind of pregnancy we have. It's how we open to it, moment by moment, breath by breath."  When I couldn't imagine what our baby would be like and didn't feel a loving connection to our child, it would've been a balm to read that "if we can stop second-guessing ourselves and forcing ourselves to feel whatever we're conditioned to believe we ought to feel, bonding will simply happen," as Celia Strauss expresses. I've underlined several passages from Karen Maezen Miller's essay, Preparing for Childbirth--which is in itself worth the price of the book--and have already been reading them out loud to my students in class. The following excerpt sums up nearly everything I've learned about mindfulness and motherhood:

There is an unexpected end to every pregnancy. The end is birth itself, and whether early or late, easy or difficult, every birth is unpredictable and astonishing. Pregnancy prepares us as all of life prepares us. It prepares us to let go of how we thought it would be, and to focus on how it is. It prepares us to dwell solely on what appears in front of us, instead of on the anxious, fearful ruminations in our head. No matter how you think or feel, you can literally see how prepared you are, and you can trust it.

 I was initially a little disappointed that the book itself was so slim, but I soon realized that its small size is in fact one of its greatest strengths. Being pregnant, especially with your first baby, is an overwhelming experience of learning, researching, and swimming in a veritable sea of new information. Between figuring out how to live in and support the new reality of your shifting and expanding body, to weighing options for the birth of your baby, to trying to decide on which strollers, car seats, and diapers will suit your lifestyle, there you might seem to be little space available to learn how to meditate, especially if it means reading thick volumes on the subject. This is the genius of The Mindful Way Through Pregnancy: with its short essays, and CD of guided practices, it will fit nicely into the whirlwind, and provide a safe place to land, find some grounding, and begin to develop those mindfulness practices that will serve you as birth draws nearer, and once your babe is in your arms.

Holding this book in your hand, you will have all the foundation and guidance needed to get you started with several different mindfulness practices, specifically geared towards expectant mothers, which will serve and nurture you through your pregnancy and beyond. I am so grateful that this book is out there, and I highly recommend it.

:: :: ::

I am so thrilled to have a copy of the book to give to one lucky reader! Please leave a comment below to be entered in the drawing! I will leave the comments and the contest open until 11:59pm, Central Time on  Monday, October 29th . I will reveal the winner on Tuesday, October 30th, when I'll share a very special treat with you: an interview with Karen Maezen Miller!


Disclaimer: Shambhala Books is providing the giveaway copy, at my request. I purchased my own copy of the book. My opinion is, now and always, entirely mine.

from the archives: teeny tiny practice

:: Friends, this is the truth: I have few words these days. As I was sifting through the archives of an old blog while working on a new project I'm very excited about, I found this post, written in April of 2009. It feels as fresh and true as if I'd written it last week. Thought you might enjoy it, as I enjoyed re-reading it just now. ::

In my relatively short tenure as a yoga teacher, I have already discovered that people will respond to hearing about what I do in fairly predictable ways.  One of the responses I often hear is, “Oh, I’d love to do yoga, but I just don’t have an hour a day to do it.”  There are many misconceptions about yoga among the general population (and it is beyond the scope of this post to give even a passing glance at all of them), but this seems to me to be one of the most common and unfortunate ones.

I can see how it would be logical for someone who doesn’t know too much about the practice to think that you need that much time for a single session, since public yoga classes typically last between 60 and 90 minutes. But this is by no means prescriptive. True, in a perfect world, we would all be able to get in an hour’s worth of practice before facing whatever our day holds, but I believe that this is a case where quality is more important than quantity. Some yoga is definitely better than no yoga.

Earlier this week, I had to leave the house at 7am to fight traffic and be in East Austin by 8:30am. I did not get up at 5am to get in a full practice; but instead of giving up on practice altogether, I went into my yoga room and sat on my zafu.  I connected with my breath; I chanted. I did two simple but potent asanas: chakravakasana and vajrasana.  All told, I spent no more than five minutes on my yoga practice this morning, but it was enough to center and ground myself before beginning my day, and it made a difference.

Even more important than quality or quantity is consistency. Doing five minutes of yoga on most days will allow you to reap infinitely more benefits from the practice than doing one hour-long session weekly.  Although it is possible to enjoy the benefits of a yoga practice from the very first moment you step on the mat, you only really begin to experience its transformational powers when you practice regularly.  This can mean doing as little as I did earlier this week; I”ll even go further than that and say that, for a beginner, simply sitting on one’s mat for five minutes a day would be enough to reap some of the benefits of practice. This is by no means the only practice you should ever aspire to, but it’s a damn fine place to start.

I am reading Wild Mind, a book on writing by Natalie Goldberg. She draws a lot from her Zen practice to flesh out her vision of what writing is all about, and this story she relates about her late Zen teacher speaks directly to the matter at hand:

When someone complained about getting up at 5am for sitting meditation, Katagiri Roshi said, “Make positive effort for good.”

This is what we do when we step onto the mat, even if just for five minutes: we make a positive effort for the good–our own, and the good of people and things around us. This is why a week-long of daily five minute stints on the mat adds up to more than a single hour-long session: sure, you’ll have done less asana, and probably won’t have gone as deep in five minutes as you could have in a whole hour, but you’ll have stored up many days’ worth of making a positive effort for good. You will begin to create a a new rhythm, a healthy habit, and it is these seeds, tenderly and regularly tended to, that will bloom into a fully beneficial and transformative practice.

Try it: find quiet spot. Sit down comfortably, and close your eyes. Notice your breath. Notice your body. Notice your thoughts and emotions. Don’t try to change a thing. Settle into the moment. Spent five minutes doing nothing. Now slowly get up, and mindfully go about your day. You may wonder, Is this really yoga? You bet it is. Lather, rinse, repeat, every day like brushing your teeth.  Go ahead. Let me know how it goes.  See if it doesn’t begin to change your life a little

try something new: a 40-day practice

this was taken in our friends' bedroom, where we were housesiting over the weekend

It seems like the whole blogosphere is preoccupied, come September, with re-establishing rhythms or implementing new routines, which is necessary for all the members of the family, not just the youngsters returning to school, after a summer of goofing off. In the yoga community, when wanting to break an old habit or create a new one, practitioners often turn to a 40-day practice. This means committing to doing, or not doing, one specific thing for a period of 40 days. I've often read that "yogic science tells us that it takes 40 days to create or break a new habit." I can't vouch for the scientific claims of that statement; however, 40 days feels like just the right length to commit to. Not too long, so it seems manageable and you won't get discouraged, but not too short, so you have time to explore a variety of days and circumstances.

I'm a big fan of the 40-day practice, and have done a few over the years. After an especially wonderful yin yoga workshop earlier this summer I committed to a 40-day practice of doing butterfly pose in the evenings. I'd slowly moved away from practicing cooling poses in the evening, and the workshop reminded me how good they felt, and how much I missed them. The 40 days covered a tumultuous period of time for our family, involving two major trips. If I hadn't made that commitment, there are many days when I would've skipped practice even though I really needed it. That's one really nice feature of this kind of endeavor. Even for a seasoned practitioner like me, who knows how good yoga makes me feel and how much I benefit from it, the temptation is often great, especially at the end of the day, to slack off and to skip it. Having committed to a 40-day practice takes me over that hump of hesitation and settles me onto the mat where, truth be told, I am always happy to be.

I don't make it to the mat every night now that the 40 days are over, but I do so often, and when I don't, I miss it. That length of time was enough to make practicing cooling poses in the evening what feels right, what I really want to be doing. In fact, I am retooling my evening routine now to shut screens off around 9pm, and devote the time before bed to self-care and grooming, yoga, and reading real books in bed. I feel so good about that change.

My new 40-day practice I've hinted at here. Now that Silas now regularly sleeps past 6am, I can do that most wonderful thing I've been dreaming of ever since I became a mother: waking up before he does so I can have some quiet time to myself at the start of the day. Once I'm up, I splash some water on my face, then sit on my cushion, take three deep cleansing breaths, do a few upper-body stretches, then recite this aspiration for my day. Simple. If given the time, I'll stay longer, do some breathwork, and maybe even meditate for a whole 10 minutes. The mornings I get to do all that are lovely. But just having settled on the cushion for even a few brief moments centers me, roots me, and makes me feel accomplished: one more day of 40 in which I kept this commitment to myself.

I've mostly used the concept of the 40-day practice for yoga; however, you could do any number of things. You could commit to 40 days of green smoothies, 40 days of reading a few pages of fiction, 40 days of getting outside with your family no matter the weather or circumstances, 40 days of mindful breathing, journaling, no Facebooking, no gossipping, no gluten, etc, etc. 40 days is a nice length of time in which to explore making changes that have been nagging at you without having to commit to changing your whole life. 40 days is short enough to be doable, yet it is long enough to change your life.



Won't you join me? I'd love to hear what changes you've been meaning to make, old habits to break, or new ones to embrace. Maybe a 40-day practice be right for you? Would you be interested in a small, mindful community of support and accountability to see you through your own 40-day practice? Do share your thoughts in the comments below!

what is mindfulness, part 2: the kitchen sink

find part 1 here

This past weekend, I attended an afternoon workshop with one of my yoga mama gurus, the deeply fabulous Jenn Wooten. It was a yin yoga workshop, a practice to which she introduced me over two years ago, and one with which I fell deeply, madly in love. In yin yoga, poses are usually done close to the ground, and held for long periods of time, the better to target and stimulate the deep connective tissue woven around the joints, and the joints themselves. It's a practice in which we play with the edge of our discomfort, lean into sensation, and, as Jenn beautifully put it, learn not to feel stuck even when we are stuck.

In short, it's a perfect primer, and support, for motherhood.

image source :: half pigeon pose

Let me give you an example: you move into pigeon pose (or as it's known in yin yoga, sleeping swan.) You settle in for a hold of about 3 minutes. At first you're sailing along, breathing, remaining present. And somewhere into the second minute, an irritation begins to rise, like an itch that's becoming more and more imperative to scratch, and all of a sudden, you feel this urge to bolt. Get me out of here. In this very moment lies the heart of a yin yoga practice, and all that it has to teach us: how to grow curious about the sensation, find our breath, remain present, re-commit to the moment. On the other side of this high pitch of discomfort lies a deeper sense of ease, of space, of softness. If we learn to stay and abide with the strong sensation, not push it away but lean into it, there is a whole world of peace to be gained.

Or, shall we put it another way? It's 4pm, and you've exhausted the amount of times a reasonable parent will let her toddler watch Thomas & His Friends. You are both tired of each other, and it's either too hot or too wet to go outside. You are trying to work on dinner, and your little ray of sunshine needs your help every 2 minutes to retrieve the truck he insists on driving under the couch. There is no more wine in the fridge. And now little arms are wrapping themselves around your legs, you feel tiny teeth bite down into your thigh, and grubby hands grasp at your pantleg and pull as a chorus of mama! mama! mama! pours out from your child's mouth. Do you feel it? The urge to bolt. Get me out of here. Except that, in motherhood as in yin yoga, we have committed ourselves to stay. There is nowhere to go. What to do?

Lean in. Soften. Breathe. Find the space.

The infinitely wise Karen Maezen Miller says that in order to practice at the kitchen sink, you have to practice at the cushion. If we are to have the resources and resiliency to remain present through the challenging moments of motherhood, we have to hone or practice those skills somewhere--and, for me, both the meditation cushion and the yoga mat are that training ground. And whether I am on the mat, the cushion, or at the kitchen sink, what I am working with is the same: that urge to bolt, to scratch the itch, to reject the present moment. Tibetan Buddhists have a word for it: shenpa, which means "attachment", or "being hooked" or "stuck." This hooked feeling has a familiar, ancient flavor: we've been there a million times before. Something irritates us, displeases us, doesn't line up with what we feel should be happening in the moment, and before we know it--boom, we're hooked.  We're hooked, and we're being reeled into an old story about how unpleasant things are, and there's this irresistible urge to act out in a violent way: to bail, to scream, to lash out. Sound familiar?

What mindfulness practice gives us, whether it's yoga practice, yin or otherwise, or meditation practice, is not a life free from such moments of feeling hooked. (Wouldn't that be nice?) Instead, it teaches us to develop the skills to first recognize when we're being hooked, and then to allow a pause in which to breathe, find space, and soften. That pause is what allows us to remain present with the difficult sensations in the pose, and find the release on the other side. That pause is what allows us to remain present with the cranky toddler, to find enough space in which to breathe, and connect to the inner resource that will turn the moment into a tickle fight instead of a generalized tantrum. 

I wouldn't have a prayer of finding that breath, that pause, at the kitchen sink, if I hadn't developed the ability to do so on the mat. When I first encountered yin yoga, I knew I had found a practice that would profoundly inform and support me when I became a mother. I leaned on the practice all throughout my journey to conception, and through my pregnancy. Since becoming a mother, it has been a constant companion, a resource and a refuge, one for which I am deeply grateful. I drift away from it from time to time, oftentimes being too tired in the evenings to even go lie down on my mat. But it was a wonderful treat to revel in over two hours of guided practice this past weekend, to go back to the source as it were, and to find fresh inspiration. I know I'll reap the benefits of it next time I'm at the kitchen sink, feeling that old familiar itch again.

For much deeper and more eloquent discussions of shenpa, please turn to two wonderful books by the incomparable Pema Chodron: Practicing Peace in Times of War, and Taking the Leap.

finding space

The above is my favorite spread from Susannah Conway's book, This I Know, which a marvel and a delight."Slow down. Listen in. Create space." A mantra for these drifting days.


I've been slowly coming back to my evening yoga practice. Over many weeks it went dormant: my studio, the only room in our house that doesn't have an A/C unit, is unusable in the summer, and without a regular space to anchor it, I more or less lost my way to my mat. Habits are funny things, aren't they? No matter how well established, the slightest change--like needing a new space--can derail them. But with the general lack of structure of my summer days, in which everything depends on the boy's wake-ups and naps, and these are moving targets at best, I find I need some solid ground upon which to release and unwind. So I've been unrolling my mat right in the middle of the messiness of our bedroom and stretching out, letting go of some of the day's tension. My body is tight, tight, no doubt a result of my trying to hold on to something, anything stable and permanent. I'm uneasy with these days' drifting. I feel my need for order and predictability rising in the face of my shifting schedule, a no-win situation. In those moments I have been giving myself over to the mat at night, some of those tight knots are beginning to loosen. Not unraveling just yet--but finding some space inside the tightness. A little more room for breath. I need all I can get.