Back from Oregon...

August zoomed by as did September. Then at the end of September into October I went back to Oregon. Lots of quilt shows, quilt shops, and bits of nature later... I am now home, sorting through hundreds of photos and wondering what I want to do with this blog... again!

And practicing yoga, and putting fabrics away, planning clothes and quilt projects, catching up with the cats...

A discovery about myself and yoga...

The other day I went to a vinyasa flow yoga class at another studio that opened near my house, and even though it was geared more for a beginner to vinyasa, I still found it as difficult as I always have. I keep thinking I will get into doing the faster flow yoga but it keeps not happening. A lot of it is the up and down movements, too fast for me now.

Then I went folk dancing again over at the Temple and had whatever a Jewish epiphany might be called: I like my yoga slow and my movement to be dancing. I think I always have and it somehow took a new awakening for me to see it again. I love to dance but do not go do it often enough. I am going to start going to Contra dance and English country dance again too. Since there isn't a NIA teacher in Sacramento these days (which was my dance exercise of choice for a long while) I will get back to folk type dancing.

Wild Geese...

Today in yoga class Denice read Wild Geese by Mary Oliver.  This poem has flitted in and out of my life over the years. I first heard it when Jan Haag read it in our creative writing class at Sac City College many years ago. I had taken that class just as an easy way to get some units for my continuing credit for my teaching credential and it turned out to be a key turning point in bringing me back to writing.  Then I heard the poem a other times and most lately a few times in yoga classes at It's All Yoga. Seems a lot of yoga teachers like Mary Oliver poetry.  And again this morning, my first yoga class of the New Year and Denice read it to the class. I figured it was time I posted it so I would have it at my fingertips:

Wild Geese   by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

And HERE is Mary Oliver reading the poem.

Reviewing...

The other day Tami was giving a workshop in our yoga teacher training session and through what she said reminded me of my Word of the year and the CDF's (core desired feelings based on the Danielle LaPorte book, The Desire Map). I realized it had been MONTHS since I had thought of those and decided to review them and see just where I stood with them...

My Word for the year in 2015 was OPEN. HERE is where I wrote about that.
My CDF's for 2015 were unencumbered, aligned, vibrant, connected, and mindful. HERE is where I list them but I see now I never really wrote more about them.

Now it is the week of Thanksgiving and many people are doing Gratitude challenges and such on Facebook and other social media. Or maybe preparing what they will say on Thanksgiving, the one day it seems we all have approval to feel gratitude. This has always been a hard thing for me. Not being grateful but expressing it. Lately there are a lot more articles online about how developing a gratitude practice is helpful in our lives and after so many years of cynicism I decided to tone my negative voice down and actually give it a try. So I joined the 40 day Gratitude challenge on Facebook and decided to take a look at thoughts and ideas I had set forth for my life and how this year played out.

Ok ok I am so grateful it is satsuma season (photo above)!! But seriously...

Starting with the Word for the year. OPEN. I think I have been more open to things happening this year. Where I think I have fallen down is being more open to accepting people as they are. Still needs work.

For the CDFs, I think I have had only bits and pieces of advancements with them:
Unencumbered: may need to use this one again next year. My house is still messy and I still have way too much stuff.
Aligned: I did better with this one and have a very positive feeling about bringing more yoga into my life. I am feeling more aligned physically but also mentally/spiritually. I have never been a religious person but I still feel there is some spiritual awareness that runs through my core. The yoga teacher training also helped me reawaken some of this curiosity.
Vibrant: I had hoped to do more art this year. Perhaps that is something again for next year. I have been feeling the loss of artistic mojo extremely powerfully these last few months.
Connected: Both good and bad on this one. I have been in touch with some people and relatives I had not been for a while, and some of that has brought sadness as well. Two of my cousins (one on my dad's side and one on my mom's) both passed away within a couple of weeks of each other last month. It makes me sad that I did not make more of an effort to stay connected. But also I have noticed the last few months I have been more introverted and have not gotten together much with people or made efforts to be more connected.
Mindful:  This one sort of laid dormant for a while then lately I am being much more mindful in several ways. Part of this is from an expanded awareness of mindfulness through the yoga training program and some of it is taking hold of my food issues and being more mindful of what and how much I am eating again.

So now I am thinking forward to next year and wondering if maybe I just need to give my words and ideas another year to percolate or is it time to choose a new word and cdfs? No hurry, no worries... just a thought that is taking hold this morning. This morning where I was grateful to wake up in a nice warm bed in a paid-for house.

What are you grateful for? Do you keep a gratitude journal? I am curious what other people are doing to align things/actions/thoughts in their lives... feel free to leave a reply.

Fitbit free and lots of flowers...

Today was Day 1 Fitbit free. I decided to take a break from counting my steps because I found it was holding me hostage... I would check it all the time and be bothered when it wasn't registering right, and finally it was creating way more stress than I need right now. I already know my patterns: I walk more when I am at school in the course of a day and need to purposefully walk or move more on the weekends. Doesn't take an electronic gadget to tell me that. One less thing to keep track of in my life. I like that.

And lately I have been feeling very stressed enough from other things. I noticed that when I was on my yoga mat before class this morning. I had a hard time stilling my thoughts -- they were all over the map! I am glad at least I got myself out of the house for yoga because at the end of it I did feel less stressed, and a slight bit taller. I love how all the stretching makes me feel and for a while I think I walk taller and more aligned. Of course then I went home and got on the computer and hunch up and probably ruined it all but it was nice while it lasted!

And finally all the bulbs and flowers Andy has been planting in the garden are really exploding with color! Oddly however, we have a ton of yellow poppies coming up. Lovely but he thought he planted red ones! Too bad we don't still have the bag they came in, but anyway they are very pretty.

The freesias just smell divine! They are definitely in my top 3 of favorite spring flowers! And the poppies are going wild! Wish we had a larger area of them planted (like the whole front lawn?) I have never liked grassy areas in gardens although I know we need some for when our dog goes outside, but if I could have what I really wanted I would go for the unkempt English cottage garden look any day!

Goodbye 2013...

Getting ready to say Happy New Year to 2014 in a few hours...

Tomorrow I will start the New Year off with a 2 hour yoga workshop at It's All Yoga.

Photo credit: Yoga Journal

It is a dream of mine to be able to do The Dancer Pose (Natarajasana) some day, so need to work on my flexibility and balance this coming year.

HERE are some lovely Pinterest images of this pose.

And more inspiring yoga photos HERE.

Yoga thoughts... and lemons.

It is getting easier. Not so many excuses (I don't have anything to wear, I'm hungry, tired, etc, it's too late, or myriad other words that have been keeping me from feeling better) and more doing. Slowly a change...

I went to the "winter Soul-stice" workshop at It's All Yoga last night and really enjoyed the 2 hour practice. And from it came another word for me to focus on in the coming year... soften.

Yes I know I had already chosen my word for 2014 as BREATHE and it will stay because for me it is the most important thing to focus on, but the idea of softening just hit a good chord with me so it might be something I keep handy in my mind as I go about my days too. Two other words/ideas have come from yoga lately too which I have noticed I may need to pay more attention to as well: aware (of myself more than things around me) and boundaries (as in paying attention to them within me).

And an interesting thing I am also noticing. My blog roll list is huge (on Feedly) and most of them are art blogs, but I am finding yoga blogs lately too and adding them and today I realized I have a fair amount of them in my DAILY READ list. And I am finding I go to them first. I enjoy reading of experiences other people have bringing yoga into their life. And I find truths in those blogs that I very well could have written in mine...

“... I remembered something important: practicing yoga makes me feel good. It allows me to move my body, stretching and feeling my muscles activate. It helps calm my mind and keep me centered. It allows me to connect with an entire community of like-minded people. But showing up at the studio for class does not happen by accident. It happens only when I prioritize and make a conscious effort.”
From Bekah: Outside the Box

And now to figure out what to do with my lemons, hiding in the backyard...

Another ATC swap finished...

It was the last one on my list from last month and now it is done! It was another SWAP-BOT one of 4 ATCs using the same topic but made 4 different ways. I chose flowers as my theme.

Copic markers, sharpies, white pen, hand drawn flower:

Doodled flower with sharpies and copic markers for colors:

Collage of used postage stamps:

Magazine picture, quote, raised sticker:

Meanwhile today I am working on school stuff for my new ELL Science support class and converting yoga videos into .AVI so I can play them also on the TV, which is in the bedroom and has a rug in front of it which is more comfy than my cramped art studio. But there is also more cat hair (not to mention cats who seem to like to walk on my chest and laugh at me when I lay on the floor) so I may have to just make space in my art studio and use my computer.

Of course I could get my butt out the door and actually GO to more classes but I always think of it when no classes are happening.

Still thinking about INTENTIONS...