We live every moment at the frontier of what we know and what we don't know. It is at this frontier that we explore the growth and possibility of our lives. Living here - as I learned as a child from Laura Ingalls and her family - requires grace, courage, focus, and a willingness to embrace the reality that none of us know where we are going and that is wonderfully OK.
I am writing this on the eve of my birthday, annually a good day for a little introspection and retrospection. This year marks a birthday that ends with a 5, hopefully a mid-mark of another decade here on planet Earth. I remember vividly the joy and anticipation I felt when celebrating my last birthday that ended with a zero. In hindsight, I am thankful that one of my birthday gifts that year was not a crystal ball. Had I known how the next five years would challenge me, stretch me, and, in some ways, break me, I would have been more afraid than excited. But, while painful, the past five years, have also been a profoundly fertile time of growth and change – exactly what I believe we celebrate when we celebrate birthdays. I hope you'll join me in celebrating your next birthday as I am celebrating this one of min - as a wonderful opportunity to celebrate your capacity for growth and a moment to welcome the coming year with joy and anticipation.
For six years my dog has been bounding into my garden, crushing my plants. For six years, I have been hollering at him. This pattern of ours had become so normal that I'd almost forgotten it was a problem I could solve. It turns out that a lot of our stress comes from little bursts of friction caused by our own behaviors and choices! The self-awareness that comes from yoga can go a long way toward smoothing these self-induced bumps in the road.
"You can be the sunshine for another person." It is simple - love one another. It is also difficult. Love takes effort, courage, creativity, generosity, and trust. It is also the most empowering thing we can do. Sharing your light in this world does not dim your light at all. In fact, sharing your light actually makes your light shine brighter. It is in giving ourselves away that we receive the riches of this wonderful life we're here to share.
A truck drove into a bridge in front of my house, inviting me to imagine how a yoga practice could have helped the driver avoid some of the mess he made. He might still have had the accident (nothing, not even yoga, makes us perfect). Yoga could have helped him minimize the swath of destruction caused by his reactions - which he and my neighbors would have appreciated very much.
"Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely." Accepting (even welcoming!) change takes great fortitude. Unlike the rigid strength of resistance, however, it is a flexible strength that allows us the resilience to bow, bend, and bounce as we choose to allow life's changes - welcome or unwelcome - to become growth opportunities.
An adolescent lack of self-awareness in a high school math class taught me the hard way about the power of body language when my teacher mistook my extreme discomfort as extreme indifference. Decades later my yoga practice furthered my understanding that mindful body language can help me convey to those around me that they are welcome, interesting, and valued.
One of the most transformative gifts of a yoga practice is the willingness to be patient with slow progress that often doesn’t look like progress at all as it weaves and circles and backtracks. This willingness allows us to survive and even thrive as we navigate grief, unexpected career changes, “long-haul” parenting, caring for a sick or dying loved one, the collapse of a marriage, the upheaval of a global pandemic, and so on. In times like these, it’s perfectly natural to hope that Google will have the answer or at least the phone number of an expert who has the answer. It’s understandable to want an easy fix when you’re worried or in pain. But the healing, creativity, perspective, strength, and resilience that we need in situations like these do not develop quickly. These are times for the patience and persistence of a yogi (or a tortoise).
In the heat of the moment of disagreement with my husband, my yoga practice provides a moment of clarity and space. While our frustration did not disappear immediately, our feelings of aloneness and isolation in the problem did. The reminder that I am part of a "we" held together by love (yoga's promise of oneness or union) added hope that our best chance of navigating our challenging situation was together.