Breathing

My breathe felt like silk by the end of yoga tonight. Like richness, like the softness of confectionary sugar. Bringing attention continually back to the breathe, to the in and out of the ocean inside, to the one companion that is always with me on my journey. My Monday night yoga ritual has really become a love, an event that starts my week off right and something I look forward to. I have noticed, ever since starting, that I am allowing myself to move a little slower in my day to day life, to take little more time with the seemingly mundane. To be more respectful of who I am and what makes me tick.

It is really hard to have new people start working at Dancers' Workshop. There is great comfort in being the old-timer, the one who knows the ins and outs, but there is also staleness and it takes more effort to get fired up over the tasks that seem second nature. I left work on Friday trying to see my job with fresh, innovative eyes, with imagination and curiosity and perseverance. And new employees can inspire that in you, as well as leave you feeling a little boring in your routines. A little repetitive in your actions.

It will be so good to get away, to stretch beyond the buttes of this little valley. To see new people. And hear different languages. And to have no familiar routines but rather the spontaneity of travel. I have a feeling that it is going to do me so much good, in my head and my heart and my soul.

Details

It was damp and cold and grey and felt like Maine last night. And it was a welcome relief to go to yoga and relax into the warmth of the cozy room, to be able to shed both socks and shirts, as well as the tenseness that had resided in my body for most of the day. Yoga with Neesha is delicious, because she is wise and funny and really knows her Anusara yoga. We talked about self-love, about heart openers, about valuing the body we are given because it is such a gift to have life and be human. I thought about, and then let those thoughts go, how I often look at my body and wish I could change certain things. Or push it to perform on the ski slope, or the rock face, or the dirt trail. Instead, it is such a shrine to be honored for its uniqueness to me, for its ability to get me up in the morning, for me to see, hear, smell and touch, for it to allow me to think and feel and digest my food.

Olive and I often walk on the same trail everyday. My favorite time to be out is the morning because everything seems more still and magical. We had the trail all to ourselves this morning, as the wind was howling and wet spring snowflakes were flying. Spring brings a myriad of smells out of the ground that really mesmerize Olive, lead her to create roundabout trails as her nose directs her here and there and back again. I have become quite the seeker of wildlife, eager to spot the deer, the moose, the fox before my four-legged companion does. The herder in her sometimes overcomes the good dog in her, and it pains me to see her chase other animals. But with that seeking has come a deeper appreciation for the diversity of the trees, and the way a deer, when still, can blend perfectly into the forest. I notice little things, little changes that occur to branches and bushes, the sawdust from a woodpecker hole fresh on the new snow.

Drooling over the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts listings. One day I will get back to that magical place and make art again. Such a huge gift in high school. The workshop I would take would be with Joan Livingstone. I am loving her work. See it here www.joanlivingstone.com

There is just something about fiber....

Realness

Dancers' Workshop is on spring break and it has only been myself and my new co-worker Kim in the office. Everyone will slowly start to trickle in this week, including our new development director (who has replaced Robin), and the office will be abuzz again. The quiet is both welcome and also amazingly boring. I go through periods with this job when, in dramatic style, I feel like I am going to pass away from boredom. And then I get upset that I am spending my days, my time, feeling that way...I feel like the computer is sucking away my soul.

I have taken to reading to Olive in the morning. Along with singing my usual songs to her. I discovered Mark Nepo's book The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have. Oprah helped direct me to Nepo's book, one that gives a reading for each day of the year. I am finding the daily reads very inspirational and provoking, and I think that Olive is too.

From March 30, The Energy of Being Real

....He [Carl Jung] suggests that being who we are always releases an extraordinary power that, without intent or design, affects the people who come into contact with such realness. The beautiful and simple truth of this can be seen in looking at the sun. The sun, without intent or will or plan or sense of principle, just shines, thoroughly and constantly. By being itself, the sun warms with its light, never withholding or warming only certain things of the Earth. Rather, the sun emanates in all directions all of the time, and things grow. In the same way, when we are authentic, expressing our warmth and light in all directions we cause things around us to grow. When our souls like little suns express the light of who we are, we emanate what Jesus called love and what Buddha called compassion, and the roots of community lengthen....

Nepo is a poet as well as a writer, and has suffered two bouts with cancer, so he speaks from a well of deep feeling with poeticism.

It has been a weekend of being home with Jamie. The skiing is at its worse. We ventured up Snow King with our skis and skins, but watching others come down the icy, screeching slope only inspired us to climb half way. I picked my way down, Olive and Jamie racing ahead.

We are working on the upstairs of the house, and today, besides cleaning, has been my first real day up there lending a hand. Which makes me feel a little sheepish, but se la vie. Imagining what it is going to look like when it is done is exciting, and peeling back the layers of walls and floors bring small discoveries of the people who lived there in the past. Brown shag carpet, an old hair pin, ugly grey linoleum under the kitchen wood floor. I have been picking old carpet staples out of the floor, which sounds extremely exciting, but it has made me think about how no one will ever have to do this again in this house because there will be no more carpeting! My mind races ahead easily to the decorating part of the project, imagining colors and fixtures and rugs....

Time to return to the staples, although sitting here in front of our downstairs wood stove writing is really more delightful.