”

First there was nothing. Then there was everything.

Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages. A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. The tree is saying things, in words before words.

It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.
It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.
It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

The woman does exactly that. Signals rain down around her like seeds.

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I’ve not been offering a lot of special events lately (due to my coursework time commitments). So, I’m quite excited to be collaborating with Michele for our Full Moon Restorative Yoga & Healing Touch event this Saturday evening, 6:00-8:00 pm, at Datza Yoga Studio in Eastlake.

The full moon is a monthly invitation to embrace your wholeness and life’s abundance; it’s also a potent time to invite peace, possibility, and clarity. If you’ve been finding it challenging to carve out time for yourself or are over-busy lately, this may be just what you need.

This will be a sweet, spacious, and s-l-o-w two-hour practice – with gentle movement, long-held Restorative postures, Reiki and/or massage, and optional aromatherapy.

There’s a lot of napping in my house. And it’s not just the pets that nap; we humans nap regularly, too. :) This will probably come as no surprise; as all of you know by now, I’m a huge advocate of rest, naps, and slowing down.

Why? Well, partly because I’m a recovering overfunctioning perfectionist who believed that what I accomplished was somehow more important than who I was being in the world. That I had to “keep up”, make straight As, do all the things, be all the places. That my value was tied to my level of productivity. That when I (or someone else) set a deadline, it was set in stone. These were all beliefs that I held (and I see so many people currently hold) and they took my toll on my mental health. These are hard habits to break/beliefs to release.

But, we can start somewhere.

This past week, it has felt as if summer suddenly jumped out of spring here in Seattle. We hit the 90s over the weekend. If you need a cooling, grounding practice to beat the heat, consider this on-demand class recording that I offered a couple year’s ago during another Seattle heat wave. Or maybe this one for cooling & heart tending! :)

I often use the Waking Up app and recently, during one of the guided meditations, Sam Harris (the creator) said something along the lines of not all problems can be solved by thinking.

It made me take pause.

Not all problems can be solved by thinking.

This struck me as deep truth.

Some of the most empowered and beneficial choices in my life have been made by listening to and following what I call “my heart-truth” – that is by feeling into my wisdom, rather than hyper-thinking, analyzing, or rationalizing.

The challenge here is that our world often overvalues thinking-mind and undervalues heart-centered truth.

Where is the balance?

The power of stillness.

I am willing to bet that just like me, all of you “get” it.

So, why do we resist/avoid/push it away/find it so hard to make a regular part of our lives?

I already know all my own answers (ie. excuses :); perhaps yours are similar. Not enough time. No space in my day. Important and urgent things to do. Dog needs a walk. Can’t keep up with email and homework, as it is! Etcetera…

It’s been 3 years since our world seemed to shift a little off its axis. In one of the more incredible and blessed traits of the adaptable human brain, now in hindsight those early months seem to have lost some of their intense flavor of surreality, desperation, and confusion (at least for me). However, when I re-read my journal entries or watch videos/read stories from that time, I remember well. My memories now feel like Time took some fine grit sandpaper to them, the impressions slightly smoother than I know they actually were experienced then.

My partner captured the photo above on one of those surreal late March 2020 days when the city was newly shut down and eerily quiet. We found joy that day in the way the light was reflecting off of the trippy purple MoPOP wall.

I remember the quietude brought on by the lack of traffic and tourists… and the sudden awareness of so much birdsong in our very urban neighborhood. There it was, an early recognition for me: for the birds and most other non-human species, our global pandemic was not an emergency. Indeed, quite the opposite.

Spring is coming. Here in the Pacific Northwest, the hellebore, crocus, and daffodil have pushed up their green shoots – some have even begun to bloom (as seen above)! The melodic (and sometimes territorial) songs of twitterpated birds are everywhere. I even saw my first hummingbird already sitting on her tiny nest this past weekend.

Another sign of spring… don’t forget to set your clocks ahead one hour before you go to bed this Saturday night!

In other exciting news… I am fundraising this month for Seattle’s own Yoga Behind Bars (YBB)!

Join me and special guest Laura Roberts for a deluxe version of my regular Sunday night Candlelight Restorative class THIS coming Sunday! Laura will accompany the 90-minute practice with her beautiful crystal bowls. It will be a sweet evening of deep vibrational healing & rest. Dress cozy, bring your fave eye covering, and come as you are.

It’s February. The new year has emerged, and the first glimpses of spring are showing themselves in the Pacific Northwest. Plans are percolating that stretch into the late spring and summer already! Despite so many other dark things happening in the world, I feel glimmers of hope renewed.

This is the time of year when my former studio, Seattle Yoga Arts, would have launched the popular “Love the One You Are” campaign. The studio’s chosen theme for this month that contains Valentine’s Day was to embrace and wholeheartedly love yourself, from the inside out… to flip the script on the “I’m not ______ enough” culture that we all swim in. We teachers constructed classes that wove the beautiful and important yoga teachings of self-love, self-regard, santosa (contentment), svadhyaya (self-awareness), ahimsa (compassion), brahmacharya (balance), ishvara pranidhana (surrender), and so on.

Dear Seattle friends,

As promised, I have a new class announcement for the new year!

A week from today, I’ll begin offering a Sunday afternoon Restorative Yoga practice at 8 Limbs Yoga Centers here in Seattle. This will be an in-studio only class (that is to say, it will not be livestream). Here are the deets…

Many of you know that last year I began a 3.5-year Yoga Therapy certification program. I dove into my continued commitment to lifelong learning and to these ancient (and still very relevant) mindfulness practices of integration and liberation. Through that program, I once again find myself in exploratory spaces I’ve either not been in in awhile or haven’t ever been so immersed within. I’ve also found myself surrounded by so much depth and wisdom – from my teachers, my sangha, a plethora of books, and yes, even myself.

This brings me to something to ponder: How to we best set ourselves up for true and deep listening?

Today, I’d like to share some of the valuable life lessons I’ve learned from hiking (so far).

• You can only take one step at a time.

• You never know what is around the next bend.

• It’s wise to set aside expectations. And any tendency to rush.

• Respect the weather… and all beings that cross your path.

• Don’t be afraid of the rain.

…

I’m happy to share that I’ve added four yoga Nidra practices to my on-demand library.

• Yoga Nidra for Sleep

• Yoga Nidra for Grief

• Yoga Nidra for Anxiety

• Yoga Nidra for the New Moon

So, find a quiet place, set yourself up in a cozy comfy way, and try it! (Headphones optional!)

New year blessings to you! Another annual reminder that every ending is also a beginning.

Whatever rituals and events you use to mark the new year, may they – and you – be blessed.

Why is it that animals are such good teachers? Perhaps it’s because they remind us of where we came from… when rest was not optional and before we conflated worth with productivity.

Here we are well into the end-of-year frenzied roll of the holi-daze. Can we take a lesson from the teachings of my cat (pictured above) and find time each day to rest?

Rest doesn’t look the same for everyone. And it benefits us to have many options available to us in terms of time, cost, and energy replenishment needed.

Here are twelve creative rest ideas…

In Restorative yoga, we create a nest, low to the ground, to make our physical human body supremely comfortable… so that we may settle into physiological ease and rest.

Sometimes, the mental and emotional landscape will almost immediately welcome this opportunity to be seen, to relax, to spread out and take up all the space needed.

Other times, however, becoming still in the body can create a space for us to witness the (oftentimes profound) discomfort or dis-ease within our own mind, heart, and/or spirit at a given time. We might judge or feel avoidance and aversion to this occurrence. But, in fact, this is a great opportunity!

Welcome to December!

It is brrrr cold in Seattle, my friends! Is it cold where you are? How are you staying warm? My tea kettle is working over time, and I’ve excavated the winter clothes that have been buried in the closet for the better part of a year!

Come warm up with me this Sunday night at Datza Studio in Eastlake (Seattle)! I’m offering a toasty TWO HOUR practice: Candlelight Restorative Yoga Deep Dive with Hot Stones.

This week, I want to share some thoughts about the first yama: ahimsa – which is stated to be the most important and essential guidance. All others will fall into place when we fully embrace ahimsa.

It is the one I seem to hear about most often in yoga classes and articles. My guess is the most common translation you’ve heard is: non-harming or nonviolence.

I found a deeper dive into this concept expanded my own exploration..

The interstate drive south from Washington into Northern California skirts along and through the Cascade Mountain Range. It’s full of breathtaking views and natural beauty. Notable for me is Mount Shasta. Sitting right along the I-5 corridor, when “the mountain is out”, it’s pretty much “in your face” for many miles. Many of you have probably seen this magnificent mountain on your own road trips.

There is something both utterly simple and awe-inspiring to see an enormous volcano protruding out of the landscape. To behold it puts my life into perspective and humbles me in the way that only Mother Nature can do.