The poem that sums up what I've learned the last couple of years

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Teaching tomorrow

Although I'm in the middle of moving, I will be teaching tomorrow at Hot Yoga of Mendocino. Hopefully it will be a good class. I'm completely addle-brained with all the driving, packing and unpacking.

Looks like I need to fix the pictures in the previous post too...:)

shadowy valleys

I have been thinking a lot this morning about humbleness, and the power it has to transform our lives as we turn our affairs over to a force greater than ourselves. Partly this arises out of my own realizations of how much easier life is when I keep myself humble, and glad, and move from that space. Partly this comes from a conversation I just had with a friend, who is moving from a place of despair, confusion, and anger, to the realization that they can, in fact, reap the benefits of change and a deeper connection. I flipped open one of my favorite books this morning, Marianne Williamson's Illuminata: A Return to Prayer:

Dear God,

The pain of this life is more than I can bear.

I feel as though death would be better.

My thoughts are dark, my sorrows huge.

I feel as though I shall not endure, and there is

    no one and nothing to turn to now.

My hurt is so big,

I cannot handle this.

If You can, dear God, please do.

If You can, please do.

Amen.

Personally, I like to substitute the word goddess for god, because I find that the words have a deeper resonance in my body when I do so. The feminine face of the absolute resonates more resoundingly than does the male, in my current, feminine, form. Although my Sunday morning is full of light and joy this week, personal experience will never let me forget that we all go through dark times, and need to know not only how to handle them, but how to find our way out again, and how to maintain an inner equilibrium while going through our personal valleys of shadows.

Pictures from the Mendocino yoga day...

Well, I taught at the 6th annual Mendocino Yoga Day, as promised, along with Rosy Nolan, Helen Jacobs, Lisa Orselli, Maggie Norton and Diane Watjen. That was back in April, the last Saturday...I believe around $1200 was raised, in raffle ticket purchases and class attendance-related donations, for the Mendocino Coast Community Care Program. So thank you to everyone who attended!

Diane Watjen teaching...

Hannah taking class...

Beautiful room

More of Diane teaching...

Ladies in purple taking...

Maggie & Diane

Hannah teaching

Looks like fun, doesn't it? I know we all felt amazing at the end of the day. If you missed it this year, just hang on until next year, for the yoga smorgasbord!!!

Creating time

This article I found over on zenhabits.net 

(which is one of the websites I want to add to that as-yet-unwritten article on "favorite yoga blogs") (even though it's not specifically about yoga).... this article seems an appropriate follow-up to my last post. Enjoy!

And tell me, I'm curious: what do you want to make more time for in your life?

Besides yoga. ;)

Cutting back on classes

Hola, North Coast Yogis!

Wanted to let you all know that I am phasing out two of my three classes a week...you can still find me at the C.V. Starr Community Center at 7:00 am on Thursday mornings, where I will be pouring all of my sweetness, light and grit into a single class, for the time being.

I am getting ready to transition myself onto other things, potentially off the coast and inland to sunnier climes, but before then, I have a couple special yoga-related projects I'll be sharing with you. More on them later.

This week is your last chance for Monday night Hot Vinyasa class with me at the community favorite: Hot Yoga of Mendocino. The following week there will be a new teacher for us all to try! I'm going to miss you, my regular Monday night folks.

This week is also your last chance to restore with me on Tuesday night, 5:30 at the Redwood Health Club. It's now only $8 to drop in for yoga there. Nice deal.

a poem for you, until I can write more...

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow. 
~Galway Kinnell