For Sara

Your soul and mine ©2006 All Rights Reserved

Young one, I see your soul and feel your yearning.
In a mirror of yesterday, my dreams and desires afresh
full of conflict, joy and pain.
Cruel hurts many years past now sting us both.
Your eyes tell the story of your life and mine
reflecting deepest desires, fears and unhealed pain.
In your tears I face emotions from long ago
that loosen and tighten their grip on my heart, now yours.
I witness your fear of letting go and giving in.
I recognize your passion to fight.
Fight unspeakable fears, injustices, disbelief, hopelessness.
Fight them sweet one because they are arrogant and misplaced.
Faith, Hope and Love that sustain me will carry you through the years
and looking into your daughter’s eyes while seeing your own sorrow
and feeling hers, you will discover that same Faith, Hope and Love
will remain with her and nourish her spirit.

Yoga

Confession: I am an addict! I'm addicted to yoga. For nearly 3 years now, I've been practicing yoga on a weekly basis and I'm convinced it is life transforming. Yoga is so simple, yet extraordinarily complex. In its most basic definition, yoga is the learned art of simply being. That may sound easy, but trust me, it may be the most difficult aspect of yoga (of life for that matter). Think about it... simply being and not doing. Being as you are, who you are, where you are in the moment you are living. We are a society of doers. If we are not doing, then we must be lazy or unsucessful! "Being" requires us to be uniquely in touch with body, mind and spirit. Deeply enough to be in tune with our physical (strength, balance, flexibility, alignment), our mind and emotions, and our spirit - all in the moment in which we are breathing. It is not how strong, upset or prayerful we were this morning, or how we plan to feel after our yoga practice ends, or how well we multi-task, but having clarity about our whole being in a specific moment in time, and accepting and respecting where we are right now.

How many times do you catch yourself thinking about what you will say next, or making a to-do list in your head while you are interacting with someone else? We all do it. While I practice yoga I try to stay in the moment each and every moment of that hour. Do I succeed? Not 100%, but it is a goal and it is something learned with practice. I find it ironic too, that if I am true to yoga teachings I can not scold myself for failing to stay in the moment (or not having the perfect Forward Bend) because yoga also means accepting my body and myself the way I am. When you think about that, it is great! I can have a goal for which to strive (maybe for years), but I'm not allowed to beat myself up if I don't achieve it. For us perfectionists, that is the ultimate freedom.

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