Yin to My Yang

"A sister is both your mirror - and your opposite." ~ Elizabeth Fishel

I am always telling my sister how she needs to do yoga, well I am always telling everyone that. However with her, I may be a little more pushy! After telling my sister for months to do yoga, she did finally listen. She found this class she really liked – yin yoga. I was always aware of what yin yoga is – very restorative – holding poses for 3 to 5 minutes. However, I have always preferred the flow and movement in a vinyasa class. Taking it at face value, holding poses for long periods of time did not strike me as something I would enjoy. I was just happy she was practicing yoga. After all, the poses are just something we do to get to the heart of who we are – the yogic state is already within us. So it didn’t matter to me that she wasn’t doing chaturangas. The fact that she was feeling the benefits was all that mattered!

I did become a little more interested, call it curious. Because she enjoyed it, it made me want to know more about it. I intended to try a yin class for awhile, but they always seemed to be offered on a Sunday evening. For me, that’s a time of winding down at home and preparing for work on Monday (and if it is football season -  fahget about it!) However a few weekends ago, the stars aligned, and I found myself in my first yin class on a Sunday evening. I fell in love! It was like a hot bubble bath with lavender aromatherapy after a massage! Just the restoration my body needed. In my opinion, the perfect complement to a very yang vinyasa practice. I now see myself making yin yoga a part of my practice.

My sister and I couldn’t be any more opposite – I’m a vegetarian, she loves red meat. I like neutral colors and with her it is the brighter the better. I prefer flats and she loves heels. I could go on and on…

Actually, I think Taoist philosophy describes us much better – there are no opposites, but complements.  You can’t know one without knowing the other. She is the yin to my yang. After all the pushing I have done to get her to do yoga, here I am thanking her for getting me to do yoga! She finally gets her yogic props!

New Year, New Home

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." ~Maya Angelou

Finally settling in to our new city, new jobs, and new home, my husband and I were recently recapping the past year. What a year! We lived in two cities on two different coasts - traveled thousands of miles across the US, visiting a whole bunch of states in between, and traveled to five different countries.  Just a little over a year ago as a part of my yoga training, I wrote down my new year intentions for 2011 on a piece of paper. I never thought I was actually going to quit my job and move to the west coast, as I wrote. OK, maybe I believed it a little... after all one thing I really learned in my teacher training was the power of intention and desire. 

It is amazing how much we experienced to get here, but I feel as if I have finally arrived! We followed a dream and here we are - living in our dream city in our dream home. I am presently living in Portland, Oregon. How is that for some present moment awareness!

This year, in a cafe in Paris, my husband and I once again wrote down our intentions for the new year. Although, they are not nearly as dramatic as last year, this time there is no doubt in my mind that by practicing attention to the present moment and detachment that they will all manifest! In fact some already have... I got a new teaching gig!