Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Yoga. I taught a new class this morning and it went well. Two gorgeous curvy women showed up, I had a new cd that I really like, and I wore a mala my dear friend made me for good luck. More and more I see how yoga has been essential to my ability to practice self-compassion, to my efforts to heal and get stronger, to be sane. Through teaching, I can see directly how much I’ve changed, transformed.

2. My new favorite tshirt from Curvy Yoga in Nashville. I love the work that Anna does — she’s one of the reasons I became a yoga teacher, knew I had the right, belonged. I think I’m going to demand that from now on all of my clothes are this soft, this comfortable.

3. Decluttering, simplifying. In order to make room for this new wardrobe of soft, comfortable, beautiful clothes that I’m certain are coming my way, I got rid of an entire trunkload of stuff. It felt so good. Bathroom drawers and kitchen cabinets and bookshelves are next.

4. Kelly’s Giant Ginger Cookies. I’d been wanting to make these for a long time and finally had the desire, ingredients, and time all in the same place. Susan’s blog has some amazing recipes, and I love her stories of my friend and her daughter, Kelly. I told Susan after I made the cookies that I was wishing we could all sit down over a cup of tea and enjoy them — heck, I’d eat a bowl of dirt to get to sit and chat with Kelly again, make her laugh with my dumb dog stories.

5. Danielle Ate the Sandwich’s new album, The Drawing Back of the Curtains. I’ve been listening to it non-stop since she released it.

Bonus joy: my three boys, watching old episodes of Friends on Netflix and laughing with Eric, Gumpkies (cabbage rolls), the good chocolate, beautiful malas, good music, sleep, a new season of Downton Abbey.

1. Truth: I am trying really hard to not feel overwhelmed. I came back to my CSU work yesterday after a long few weeks of vacation. Part of getting myself organized, ready for the start of the semester, was putting all the things I’ve scheduled for the next sixteen weeks on my Google calender. When I saw it in “black and white” like that, I was surprised by how much I had committed to: teaching yoga, a training class with Ringo, Feast with Rachel Cole, various Open Heart project opportunities, a ZenPen ecourse, weekly meetings with interns, yoga classes, blog posts, working on a book, etc. At that moment, I had a choice: freak out or accept it. For now, I’m accepting it, trying not to freak out.

2. Truth: It isn’t helping that I haven’t seen the sun for two days straight. Today isn’t looking good either, gray and cold. It’s hard to imagine how I didn’t completely lose my mind growing up in the Pacific Northwest, were we’d go for weeks or even months with no blue sky, where it felt like for nine months out of every year, the sky had a ceiling and it was resting right on the top of my head, a weight that felt like it would crush me.

This morning’s couching, image by Eric

3. Truth: I’m better than I was, but my dogs still trigger such anxiety, panic in me. Sam’s mouth is itchy again, and even though we know how to help him now, to see his back leg scratch at the air and his head shake pulls me right back to the time when we didn’t know, when we thought we might lose him — my body remembers. And then Ringo snorted something irritating up his nose, was gagging and rubbing his face in the snow, and even though it only lasted for maybe five minutes, I was right back in those moments with Dexter, when sneezing and such was a sign of something that was killing him. For a long time, I lived in that panic almost every waking moment, whereas now it’s an echo in my body, a memory embodied. It comes in waves and surges, but eventually dissolves, and that’s at least better.

One wish: That even if the sun doesn’t come out, and even if we have a lot to do and things arise that trigger us, we can remember that underneath it all is a calm, an ease, a wisdom that is available to us at any time, all the time. May we easily find that space, that ease, that calm.