Mindful Yoga Schedule
Saturdays 8:30-9:45 at Holy Trinity Episcopal Parish $10
Please note that class will not be held on February 17th.
March and April dates coming soon.
Stay tuned for other things in the works
- Kids Mindfulness Hour at Green Heart Awakening starting in May and four week long sessions in the summer.
- A Mindfulness Meditation Spring/Summer series at Green Heart Awakening.
- A fall retreat that includes mindfulness, yoga, and food.
Would you like to receive yoga emails? I am much more consistent in sending those out than posting here. The emails are somewhere between a letter to a friend and a blog post. Contact me, and I will put you on the list!
The Ways We Can Catch Ourselves Falling in Love
The holiday of love is upon us. I think about love all the time and have been this way since I was a kid. But then, middle school and high school happened, and I had to disguise this. We all have that story, the one about our tender heart in the face of socializing with peers...
More recently, I have been on a search for the links between embodiment, mindfulness, and love. I want to know how they play out, especially when I am busy with car lines, dinner, and the householder life in general. After listening to a series of podcasts by Sharon Salzburg and Joan Halifax, I have been tracking plain love, the mundane love. Even as mundane, when I recognize the presence of love, it sweeps around me, and I remember that there is always more love than any of us can ever see or feel.
Love shows up all the time and is not just allotted to the bonds of marriage and family. It can be very non-emotional and so obvious that we miss it when it happens. We forget that it's always around us in some form. Love is always around us in some form.
One way love shows up is when we just know someone. You may not even speak to this person, but you know who they are. You see past their current role and into what is present for them all the time. Sometimes it feels like a relaxing because of this deep understanding you experience. Sometimes it is empathy because there is so much suffering and armor around this person.
The second way love shows up is when we see ourselves in another person, which I will add, is also when we are inspired by someone. It is also when we experience compassion for another person. When we feel compassion for another, it's because there is something inside us that feels pain and suffers in the very same way.
The third way love shows up is when people share attention, which can be as simple as being together with strangers at the checkout line, and as life changing as caring for a newborn. It's that moment when you speak for the group because you know everyone has the same question or concern. It's also that moment when something incredible happens like a solar eclipse and everyone stops to absorb the moment.
So, maybe we are in love more often than we realize, even when we don't consider the time, place, or person as right for it. And maybe falling in love is about letting go of the armor, showing our tender hearts, allowing ourselves to see and be seen even as we shuttle the kids, clean up the messes in our houses and our lives, and stand amongst acquaintances and strangers waiting our turn. Maybe falling in love is really just opening up to love and the way that it moves through you and around you.
