updates

as i sit here in between my click clicking on the keyboard, i alternate clutching a steaming cup of tea with honey, and a wadded up tissue.  mmmm. post-holiday/snow-storm illness. it's almost a tradition with me - go home for christmas and more likely than not, i will end up either ill or otherwise unwell, ranging anywhere from a nasty case of the sniffles, to going to the ER for a tetanus shot because a stray cat scratched me and my hand ballooned up to the size of a grapefruit, to not once but twice getting the 24 hour flu on christmas day.  there's just something about this holiday that always leaves me somewhat low on batteries. 

although i would much rather be curled up snoozing with my kitties, i have some serious updating to do.  a few months ago i wrote to you all about the price of happiness.  it became quite clear that i needed to make some big changes in my life and from that point forth things have percolated under the surface.  and now with the new year approaching i am very pleased to announce that i have begun taking the next steps to teaching on a more full time basis.  (!!!)

after soliciting advice from fellow yoga teachers, mentors, family and friends i have received such an amazing outpouring of support.  to take a step back from a full time job and guaranteed paycheck to work for myself in what can only be described as a very transitory business was a scary decision but, at some point, you have to follow your heart.  as i started to share this realization with other people, i was greeted with stories of similar plights, or words of admiration, advice, encouragement and above all joy.  joy that i have found something that sustains me.  to all of you fellow teachers, mentors, family and friends - thank you for that.  even in the darkest moments when i struggle with the "what if's" of the future - your support and enthusiasm for my path has given me strength.  thank you.  


i have been very lucky to work out an arrangement with my full time job so that now i will be part time with flexible hours starting 1/3/11.  though there are still a lot of things still up in the air - i am so looking forward to having more time to search for openings, to take class, and to really developing my home practice.  (stay tuned for more on that).  

 wishing you all a happy rest of the year and here's to new and bright beginnings for 2011. 


xxx

learn to love the questions

i came across this poem yesterday that is one of my favorites.  back when i was in high school, my mentor teacher, norm vandal said in one of my classes to "learn to love the questions." i remember having so much trouble wrapping my brain around that thought when he said it.  i liked answers.  i feared the unknown.  i had a plan, and i was sticking to it!  little did i know how much this piece of wisdom would shape who i eventually have become more than 7 years later.  norm was the first person who told me that i would make an exceptional teacher and actually made me believe it, and for that, i am eternally grateful. 

even though i always remembered what norm said in class that day (i recall him using me as his "teaching moment" to illustrate how so many of us rarely do love the questions. and he could read me like a book and knew how uncomfortable uncertainty made me - which of course embarrassed little high school me to no end) it wasn't until years later when i was in college, that i came across this rainer maria rilke quote that everything seemed to click.  as i read it over, i realized how incredibly yogic it sounds.  

"be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.  and the point is, to live everything.  live the questions now.  perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - rainer maria rilke


i sense i will be weaving in a portion of this reading into one of my classes.  in the meantime: i hope that this speaks to you.  

xxx