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I guess it comes with age, or perhaps surviving heartbreak and loss has changed me, but something has shifted inside of me these past years which makes everything in my world – my work, my relationships, my interaction with others, my connection to nature and society – all seem sacred, worthy of effort, patience, and gratitude. I guess my immersion in yoga awakened an awareness within that softens how I view and interact with the world. Suddenly, things big and small seem fleeting, meaningful and precious.

I am lucky. Throughout my life, I have forged relationships through teaching that are poignant and make me feel deeply connected to something bigger than myself. These relationships ground me, reminding me that my life has purpose and I’ve used my time on earth for something beyond serving my personal wants and desires. It doesn’t matter if I’m teaching dance or yoga, or writing or teaching a 40 year old how to read the alphabet. Teaching is an act of giving, a way of sharing a part of yourself with the best intentions of inspiring others to help them grow.  I have always made a living teaching, but I didn’t consider myself a “teacher” necessarily. For years I considered myself a dancer.  Then I considered myself a writer. I tagged myself an “artist”, always creating something – dances, jewelry, crafts, stories, creative meals, gardens, even a business that grew due to creative planning. Eventually, I thought of myself as a yogi and started forged new paths. All the while, teaching is what I did to make a living as I embraced these different personas. But when I look at the varied circumstances and people I’ve been involved with in my life, I realize that while I certainly was (and still am) all kinds of an artist and businessperson, the one true consistent thing that defines me is my role as a teacher.  No matter where I live or what passion is fueling my heart in the moment, I have found ways to teach and share those passions and the insight I’ve gained from them.

 It has taken me 54 years to figure out what should have been obvious from the beginning. Teaching is my dharma. So many people never find their dharma (true purpose in life). Some go throughout life pursuing what they think is their dharma, unaware that their frustration and lack of fulfillment is a byproduct of their focusing all their energy in a direction they believe defines them or their dreams, but the truth is, they’ve slightly missed the mark. A person’s true dharma is not so obvious to pinpoint (like when I believed my dharma was dance- I DID commit my life to dance, but my true dharma was teaching others to love the art as I did.) This revelation– discovering my greater purpose, allows me to feel deeply at peace when I am making decisions about my life, because I now understand happiness, for me, lies in devoting my life to something bigger than my petty wants and desires and comforts. Teaching is key to my feeling as if my time on earth counts.  I make my decisions now keeping this in mind. It keeps me on a strong path.  

I’ve always known to teach is to learn. A lifetime of teaching varied ages, subjects, & levels has helped me grow personally more than any class, degree, experience or other means of personal studies I engaged in myself. I have had a fascinating, diverse life. Each time my life has changed, from dancing in New York to moving to Florida, from Florida to Georgia, from married to single, from the city to the country, from dance to writing and yoga – from  owning a business to being retired, from being poor to being rich (and then being poor again) etc. I somehow created situations where I fell into the role of teacher. Now that I think about it, I have never spent any portion of my life NOT teaching someone something. I wasn’t in Georgia a month before I began teaching Kathy to read. I wasn’t back in Florida for two weeks before I started teaching writing to seniors. I have opted to support myself through teaching since my first job teaching dance at the YMCA when I was 16. It has been my advocation, my vocation, and my sideline. I have made a fortune teaching, and I’ve lived at poverty levels so I could teach rather than do any other kind of work. I’ve taught rooms filled with hundreds of students at big conventions, and in classes where only one person showed up as I forced myself to do the job, grumbling about my small audience. But ya know, I was equally committed and content with my work in either case.  And no matter whether I am making money and getting accolades, or scrimping by ignored and unappreciated,  I still get fully engaged and immersed in the process of teaching.
 
I can honestly say, I fall in love with my students. All of them. The respectful, talented ones, and the pains who cause me grief. It’s OK. The difficult students so often turned out to be the ones I’ve learned the most from. There have been occasions where ego, ambition, hurt and anger has destroyed what should have been a very beloved student/teacher relationship, usually in cases where the student craves respect and/or a career of their own and I am suddenly viewed as an obstacle in their way. This always breaks my heart. But more often than not, my relationship with former students has remained positive and close, proving I indeed did touch their lives and they will not forget it.

I am honored by all those relationships that have remained intact. I have former dance students who stop by to reconnect constantly. Some come and sign their children up for dance classes now, which always feels a bit surreal, because I don’t feel any older, but clearly time has marched on. Some have returned to take yoga or dance classes as adults, and we recapture that great synergy and respect, only with a  more mature slant to our  relationship.   I can’t help but marvel at the evolution of my students as people or as artists. It’s as if I’m on borrowed time. Life tosses us a gift when it comes around circular that way.

Teaching dance is important and I’ve devoted the bulk of my life to doing so. I know my young dance students have learned discipline, poise, become healthier and embraced a sense of self through dance. Some forged careers and earned an education thanks to my contribution to their mastery of the art.  I’m proud of this work, but I also know dance is entertainment for most people, and if all these dancers didn’t work with me to learn to dance, they’d have found another teacher. In some cases,  I was the inspiration to fuel the fire that kept them dancing long enough to really achieve excellence. Without me, they might have moved on to something else. But had they not been bitten by the dance bug because of my influence, something else would have gripped them and filled their childhood with memories, experiences and opportunities. Who’s to say I did them a service and dance was the best door they might have walked through?  Still, it is nice to have been a part of
their journey, and I believe I’ve made a difference in dance as an art form, because I was, and am, good at what I do. But dance, while wonderful and a vastly rewarding part of my existence, is not the most important work I’ve ever done in my life by a long shot. It was a shock to admit that to myself when I first recognized this truth, but dance is just one thread woven into to the complex twisting rope that is my life.

When I moved to Florida again, I spent 18 months teaching seniors to write. I had to let this class go when my daughter finally came to live with me, because she needed my time, attention and energy more than any student ever will, but I kept in touch with my students- or perhaps it is better to say they kept in touch with me. Eighteen months have passed and they are still deeply devoted and insist I was the best writing teacher they’ve had (they’ve had several replacements since I left, but apparently the class has not been as vibrant or progressive since I left, at least in their opinion.) They continue to write me, ask for a bit of help with writing projects and urge me to begin a new class. One student just published a book that he began in my class to help him deal with the passing of his wife of 65 years. I went to his book release party, a fancy affair at Selby Gardens, feeling more than a little thrilled to know I had set an 85 year old man on a new path of writing for healing. I purchased his book and had him sign it, thinking “In this individual’s life, my teaching made a difference.” 

In Georgia I taught a woman to read. When I met her, she only knew 4 letters of the alphabet. Three years later she was at a third grade reading level. We have remained friends. She texts me all the time, and every time I see her short sentences on my phone, I’m thrilled. The fact that she can text at all is proof of how I changed her life. Before meeting me, she tried to tackle her illiteracy several times and failed, but I was the teacher that put it in perspective for her. During our time together she not only learned to read, but became a better citizen, became healthier and shifted her attitude about many things.  Her transformation was partially due to her becoming literate, but also, she says it was having me in her corner against all odds. I was the only person who believed in her, even when she was struggling with meth and spent some time in jail, followed by probation etc.. I kept showing up, fully committed, teaching her despite the conflicts or frustrations, knowing that success was important, no matter how fruitless and inconvenient it felt some days. Today, she says I’m the one who kept her on the right path. I don’t know if it’s true or just her feeling sentimental after the fact, but it is nice to hear her express such kindness.  She recently battled cancer and called me after her doctor’s visit to share her worry . I realized then I was more than just a teacher to her. I was her friend, and a symbol of her overcoming the biggest life challenge she ever faced.  during her health scare, she wanted me around again, perhaps just as a reminder that she was strong and if she stayed the course, things would work out. (It did.)

She recently said her wedding vows again to her husband of 25 years and she sent me this picture. I got it in the middle of a frustrating tiring day. I smiled. Every effort to stay connected precious to me. Heck, I wrote a book about all I learned about myself by teaching her. So when I am feeling down and as if no one cares – when I get that sick feeling that the minute a student has gained all they want from me, they can and will dismiss me with nary a thank you or a glace backward. I remind myself,  “In Kathy’s life, I made a difference.”

For years I used to work with students with Downs syndrome and they had a huge impact on my life. Wrote a book about them too, in fact. About a year after I returned to Florida, they discovered I was in town and teaching again, so they contacted me. We started our class again, and now, this beautiful group of dancers that discovered the joy of movement with me when they were only 7 – 10 years old are in their 30’s and still dancing!  I can say without a doubt, these are the most precious students of my life and career. Every moment I spend with them feels tender, sweet, and as if I am “home” where I belong, doing what God put me on this earth to do. As I watch them struggle with new challenges as adults, their health, weight, and independence  issues serious now, (which causes stress on their aging parents) I have no doubt my relationship with these students has counted. there is never a question of whether or not their parents appreciate me, because they express it constantly in heartfelt ways. But still, on a bad day, I remind myself “In the lives of these families my continuing to teach has made a difference.”


And now, there is yoga. Yoga isn’t subtle like dance or writing. Yoga changes lives in a huge way. I can’t take credit for how yoga drastically heals, but I do know my passion and commitment to the beauty of yoga beyond the mat fuels others and inspires them to embrace yoga as a way of life. Recently I was voted “best yoga teacher in Sarasota”. I made jokes about that- convinced the honor was given because I pay for advertising rather than because I’m all that, but my assistant (someone I taught and mentored and whose life has changed through yoga) insists the award was well earned, even if it is a marketing ploy. She says I deliver the word of yoga in a way that makes others willing to do the work to gain the benefit. She says if she had a different teacher, she probably wouldn’t have embraced yoga with the zeal and determination that she had. I guess that is the point of teaching. It is not about knowing the information, but being gifted at delivering it. And in her case, I know it will be passed on, for she is a dynamic teacher in the making herself. That makes me feel as if my work really counts tenfold.


Unlike dance or writing, when you teach yoga you can see the huge impact your work makes. I’ve seen people overcome addictions, depression, grief, anger, and suicidal behavior in my program. I’ve seen them discover their dharma, make needed change in their lives, feel alive again, and connect with their best self. Yes, teaching yoga has been the most powerful work of my life thus far.  Slowly I add Ayurveda and Reiki, journaling workshops other elements of self-discovery to this yoga journey. It continues to unfold.  Every day is an adventure in learning and passing it on.

I’ve begun to believe that I was never meant to step away from my life as a teacher and retire to live a quiet life focused on art or writing or family or anything else that would only serve me personally. I often wish that life had worked out for the ease of it, and I’ve had my share of mourning for things lost. But at the same time, on a different level, it understand that it would have been a tragedy had&nbsp
;that attempt to withdraw from life to focus on my little wants and desires worked out.  To do the work I am doing now as well as I am doing it, I had to leave my successful dance empire, lose everything and be forced to reinvent myself . I swear it’s as if the universe forced circumstances and opportunities for me to grow – the last few years feel like some massive preparation designed to refill the coffers to give me more to give back.  On days when I am frustrated or exhausted or feeling that horrible sadness over how things unfolded, I find comfort in the idea that perhaps I was meant to experience all that horrid grief and loss and bad treatment too. Because being wounded has made me a  more compassionate teacher. I recognize and empathize with other wounded people now, and I  go to great lengths to help them find balance, reconnect and heal. Just goes to prove something good comes from adversity. I am deeply touched by the harshness and beauty of life. And I use that when I teach.

The other day, I had the last of three yoga teacher training graduations all happening in a single month. I’ve had four programs going at once, all of which started at different times and in different formats, but they all concluded in spring.  One was a weekend program that lasted 4 months, one was a mid-afternoon day program that lasted 9 months, one was a 6 month evening program,and one was a 4 week intensive – something I decided to try just to see if people would register for  a shorter time format.  Each program received my undivided attention as applicable, until the end, when they all happened to overlap. Made for a crazy month because I ended up working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 4 weeks. It was yoga, yoga, yoga, and I didn’t know if I was coming or going.

When I was creating the schedule, I knew this month would be a challenge, but I believed each and every one of those programs were important, and I figured I could handle  anything for a month. On week three, I started to wonder if I had overestimated myself. My assistant, Melina, (a remarkably committed 27 year old who has tons of energy, a great attitude and a sincere love for her work) and I both made jokes about how ready to crash we were. But as Orion Mountain Dreamer says, “I want to know if you can get up everyday and do what you have to do to feed the children…” , a writer with a life view I very much subscribe to, so I plodded through. At least Melina and I laughed a great deal, making fun of how tired we were, our inability to say no to others, and how, even when we were exhausted, we stayed on track and did the job well. In fact, the more teaching we did, the better we seemed to be… we were emersed in the yoga zone – not a bad place to be by any measure.

When all the work is done and we are ready to send these yoga teachers off into the world, Melina and I do all we can to make each Graduation ceremony lovely. It is a significant thing to go through yoga teacher’s training, so I think it is important to mark the occasion with an “event.” 

David prepares a slide show of each group’s yoga journey, and we invite families to come witness their loved ones getting their certificate. I have each yogi “jump the mat” (they have to leap over a yoga mat to get their final certificate) and I make a short speech about what each student brought to the table and contributed to the growth process of others. I pick a special quote that defines them. We do our final circle where we each say a word that defines our state in the moment….


(This is Mike – a minister, marathon runner, soon-to-be-a-occupational therapist with a fantastic sense of humor guy who came to training after I trained his wife, a nurse. I train lots of nurses, physical therapists, and others in the medical profession. Anyway, Mike came with trepidation regarding potential religious conflicts (none of which manifested) , he admits, and now feels yoga has enhanced his life more than he imagined it could. He and his wife are good friends of David and I now. He is just one example of the unique people I get to befriend in my work.) 

We serve wine and cake and fruit and conclude with a party , and they all get their official ReFlex shirt that has the names of their tribe on the back. There are always tears, poignant commentary and lots and lots of hugs. Here are the last few slide shows for anyone who is not on facebook seeing these posted as each slide show is made. It certainly shows you my work in a day by day fashion, the diversity and joy, and the lovely people I spend time with doing something healthy, meaningful, and with purpose. They show us laughing, working, connecting, and sometimes, daydreaming…. I love my “right liveilhood.” I feel as if all my life has been a training to do this work, and to do it well.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo9oBypHB1o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfVgr5x_1I&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl1AteLWkrc&feature=youtu.be


 The first graduation was a relief. The second graduation was on my birthday. I worked 12 hours that day, but it felt like a gift to send those yogis off into the world because it meant I got my daytime hours back. Then another graduation (sending off those yogis that had been with me longest – since Sept!) and I saw true light at the end of the working tunnel. Now I am down to one last group of trainees who study in the evenings – a group that will spend 6 months studying yoga with us for three 1/2 hours a night twice a week. And then…. I will get a much needed three week break before my summer intensive. Meanwhile, I am now deep in the throes of creating a dance recital and setting choreography and working on next year’s youth schedule, but that is fodder for a different blog. Let me just say, I love the diversity of my work, combining dance and yoga, teacher’s training and student classes. I also teach journaling and work with handicapped students and fill my working life with other growth inducing experiences, such as my studies in Ayurveda science, writing articles, and organizing workshops that I usually take myself. This month we had a raw food workshop, and next weekend we are hosting an Ashtanga (a crazy advanced physical practice of yoga) event. In may, David, Melina and I will spend a weekend completing our Reiki master’s program and we will be certified to teach Reiki to others if ever my Reiki master moves on from our studio. Ya just cant’ get bored when your life is filled with intellectually stimulating, emotionally moving work that forces you to expand your awareness, tax your creativity, and connect with good people.

Back to RYT training….. I always feel worried when I finish with one group that I might have saturated the market and now,  it is possible no one is going to show up for yoga training ever again. I love, love, love this area of my work, and these programs are vital to sustaining my business financially, so it would be a huge disappointment if one or more of my trainings didn’t go. But just this week, 4 new trainees registered for the summer program  which is still months away, and another registered for next fall’s daytime program and well….. clearly, I will enjoy many more years of yoga teacher’s training. I’m expanding my program to include an advanced level (RYT-500) next October which may bring 10-20 new serious yoga teacher trainees my way. I’m deeply excited about designing and implementing that program, which will hopefully be held in the new yoga retreat center. And that means David and Melina (my right hand gal) will be my students again for a short while. Always insightful… &n
bsp;Meanwhile, I have aerial trainings, chair yoga trainings, a kiddance workshop and other training programs scheduled for the summer. Eeesh.

I get exceptionally close to the people who begin their yoga journey (or continue on it if they are already serious yogis) with me. I connect deeply with the students in the 200 hours we spend together- we devote a great deal of time not only learning about yoga, but about ourselves. My programs include Reiki training, and a three hour journaling workshop (which many tell me is the highlight and most profound part of training… I’m getting extremely good at teaching writing as a path to healing, if I say so myself. Probably because I believe in it so much.) and we spend lots of time and effort into gaining introspection on our lives. You can’t go through a transformational process such as yoga training and not feel deeply connected to “your tribe.” I have the gift of being a central part of each an every tribe that comes through our door. I’ve been the hub of  7 tribes so far – training over 100 yoga teachers since I started 18 months ago. And each of these fine teachers goes out and impacts others….  Remarkable how many lives you can touch when you find your dharma.

I always treat each tribe to a retreat day, a day outdoors where we convene with nature, do yoga under the sun, and write, nature journal and do awareness exercises. I usually take groups to a state park where I can rent a pavilion and set things up nicely, hike, canoe and grill out, but the last two groups  I decided to combine and I took them all to the beach just for a change of pace. Loved the day… I had everyone write themselves a letter regarding their intention setting, which will be sent back to them in 6 months or a year or whenever I sense the time is right. There are many special things we do to make the retreat experience special…. I can’t wait to have a formal retreat center to take this area of work  to a whole new level.






My yoga frog goes with us on every retreat. I have pictures of him in the lake where we canoe, or in the sand, or on the beach… he normally sits on a polished root table in the lobby of the studio. Melina says that someday I need to do a slide show just of the frog. (I had a second frog in my yard, but my son absconded him and took him to school (with my blessing.) I love that my son has this symbol of something that means so much to me at college with him. ) Anyway, the frog began a one of two dozen buddhas I collected for my buddha trails – I hide them in the trees for a mindfulness exercise. But the frog was the one buddha with character that made everyone smile, and he always ended up somewhere that was difficult to collect – in the water or buried by plants, or someplace unusual so it became a “thing” to get the frog. We plan to take this frog with us when we go to India and any other remote retreat places we are lucky enough to explore. He is definitely our yoga mascot and the source of many funny memories. I’ll need a special place for him when we move operations to the new retreat center.

    

Life is good. Busy , but good. It is good to know your place and have a purpose.The other day I read that happiness comes from selfless service, and anyone who continues to focus on their own happiness all the time in an illusive effort to capture content will forever be unhappy and frustrated. I’ve witnessed people who are forever putting their needs and dreams above the needs and dreams of other’s, and they are basically depressed and dissatisfied all the time. This encourages them to work harder to serve themselves because they feel deserving of happiness, but their choices perpetuates the cycle. Having lived with people like this, I truly believe there is something to  that “giving and working for the right reasons” theory. All I know is, if giving of your time, energy and resources to others leads to happiness, then it is no wonder I am feeling better each month that separates me from that dark  place I was a few years ago.  
Life is an ongoing lesson – thankfully, I believe I’m at long last getting the point..  

I promised pictures of the new home that David and I are attempting to buy so here they are. Yesterday we had the inspection, and a few things need work, but nothing David can’t handle himself. Gosh, it sure pays to have a knowledge of plumbing, electrical work, gardening, building, etc…  when you are looking at older property. The cost of repairs or adding new outbuildings etc is only a matter of materials with David doing the work. I am so grateful of his gifts as we discuss the inspection report and what this “as is” property needs to be in great shape.
So far, things look promising, but man, are we jumping through hoops for the bank (not unusual considering the economic issues today).
Anyway, here are a few images. I’ll take you through a tour. Because there were work trucks outside of the home, I didn’t get a good shot of the actual house from the front. But you will get the idea….. the picture above gives you an idea of what you come up to after driving the initial oak lined lane. This leads to what will be our “Chakra garden, an area we plan to divide into 7 primary spots to sit and reflect, each one designed with yard art & plants to represent the 7 chakras.

A garden awaiting creation……

Big iron gates lead in from several directions. Inviting, and artistic……

The front of the house welcomes visitors with a portico that has a zen feel…. I love the big rocks, ferns and areas where we will put a buddha fountain…
 

There is an atrium outside our bedroom covered by this privacy wall. And everyone, my mother, David, the former owner etc.. has stood outside and said, “Um… you can get rid or cover that design if you want…. it’s pretty silly….. ” Meanwhile, I’m thinking, “Get rid of the crazy moon man smoking his weed ? You have to be kidding. He’s my favorite part!” OK, the hippy in me has to be honest.. I love the tiled funky design of the moon man. It’s a conversation piece if nothing else! I’m thinking it just needs a landscape light so it shows up at night too.


Next to the house, we hope to dig out a big pond… perhaps some koi…. definitely some floating lotus or other blooming plants…. and a waterfall!!!! Can’t skip that.

All the Doors and details of the house are handmade by a craftsmen…. the doors, stair railings, hoods, door handles etc are unique with stain glass windows, handmade blacksmith handles, etc… A local blacksmith made the grate for the fireplace, hooks for coats and railings too.

Walking in the front door, I feel like, “Ah… home…..”

 
Most of the indoor living will take place in this great room – and yes, that is a hole in the wall that is open to the master bedroom. Um…… must behave or put some kind of artistic glasswork in the hold, I’m thinking…..  I adore the off center, fireplace hand done iron work, and great natural light and huge beams in the ceiling….


It took me 54 years and three kitchen remodels where the one thing I wanted most and begged for (but was unable to have since it wasnt’ something my partner considered important  to at long last finally have a kitchen that has two full sized ovens! I am crazy excited. This kitchen also has a wine cooler, a nice oversized fridge, creative storage by way of uniquely designed cupboards, and a trash compactor…. I love the shelves around the windows for growing herbs… really everything is great but the stove is unusual. It is magnetic, so I have to cook on cast iron or special copper bottomed pots. David and I have to get rid of our great cookery to be able to use that stove. That will take some adjustment….. but how fun to have a cooks kitchen.
 
It amazes me that this casual kitchen, while not an expensive, top of the line kitchen, feels so special. David always says life doesn’t have to be so be so hard, filled with drama or conflict. Ya just gotta trust and learn to swim downstream with the current rather than fighting it all the time. Then life gives you what you want most… I’m learning that from him… remarkable how that one approach to living changes everything….
Happiness is natural and easy.

The bedroom master has wood floors and beams, and lovely papered walls that is like raw hay – nice closets and a fascinating bathroom that is like a hallway leading to the biggest shower I ever saw. It has two shower heads. I guess I am suppose to challenge David to a shower war!


Neva was complaining ab out the 20 minute drive to this house from our current house, until she saw her room… another master, it is big and opens to a private bathroom and a closet the size of her room now wit all these classy built ins for shoes, clothes and drawers. I’m jealous, but when she goes to college I’ll invade and take over! We have a third bedroom with another bathroom within, but is is small and doesn’t merit a pix. Still, nice to have for when my son or future grandchildren visit…. David’s son just might grace us with a visit too and he has children that I have no doubt would love to play with some chickens or explore a treehouse… 




The kitchen opens to a lovely screened deck. It features a hottub, covered area and a cool zen fountain…. the walkway you see leads around the inner deck, but leads as well to the yoga center which I’ll show next.
 

Now, the home is just for us, but an important part of making this plan affordable is that we will be using this property for yoga training, retreats and other business pursuits, such as farm to table health dinners, writing and journaling classes, etc…. Rather than expand my business again in the strip mall, we will go this new direction – a nice balance of combining our dream for living off the grid a bit and building business that we love and enjoy and can perhaps keep in semi retirement someday too, all rolled into one creative project. This building is behind the house – we will call it the yoga center. Love how it is made with refurbished materials – the windows once belonged to an old schoolhouse.


The reception area is all wood and perfectly designed for offices. It will feature a yoga, writing, and organic living library (getting huge now) and a couch  to relax. We will also have some of the organic products on display hear like natural soaps, essential oils, yoga materials etc…
A second room features space for an art journaling center, and this has a fridge and freezer, and space for other creative materials for art classes or whatnot. This leads to a seperate fenced area that we will use for a huge fire pit and outdoor yoga practice.


A big beautiful studio space seems as if it was build for yoga training. With natural light, warm wood walls a towering ceiling, all it needs is perhaps a new wood floor. Inspirational! It will old a good twenty yogis, and perhaps can be used for other sorts of classes too. Love it!



Storage awaits all the stuff we can’t put elsewhere, including tables and chair for events and writing classes etc… and the yoga center leads to another fenced area of it’s own. All secluded and private so there are no distractions other than the sound of birds.


(I suppose our firepit will be right where that rotted stump is…) This back area opens to another fence that leads to a creek down in a ravine. We have two acres beyond the creek but it will be some time until we will be in a financial and time position to clear and use that wild area. But, we are thinking we will build a suspension bridge over the creek and make some housing there – either yurts or small cabins when we are ready to expand to make this retreat offer overnight lodging too. I said to David, “Isn’t building a suspension bridge going to be complicated and expensive”…. but he said, “Um.. I’m an engineer. That is what engineers do… and it won’t cost much at all, just some cable, wood, a weekend of sweat…” Amazing. 

A short walk from the yoga center is the barn (big grin on my face, as you can imagine.) It has electricity and water, and is just perfect in every way for a hobbyist farmer….. We plan to put a workshop for David in the large closed-in space and will probably expand it eventually to be even bigger. I still have a tack room, and three stalls and covered areas for whatever else we might want to do there… The barn opens to two pasters. One is lit, which would be great for an outdoor evening riding ring, but I’m not wanting horses on this small a piece of land…. Instead we are looking into building a labyrinth there that can be lit up at night. The other paster might house a pet… a mini donkey or alpaca perhaps? But not until my work life is organized and running smoothly. The first order of business will be making this retreat center a place of healing and learning.
 



If you can imagine it, picture tables with linens and china and dozens of flame lit torches for a special farm to table dinner event. (And a wedding ya know…) We are not a farm, but we will be growing tons of ayurveda herbs and we will feature lectures and classes on organic eating and health and wellness and the area farms will provide the actual food we don’t grow, so I am convinced I can expand the yoga offerings to include this kind of retreat….. Fun!

The grounds feature long lanes of oaks where we will hang hammocks, porch swings etc… areas for journaling and meditating everywhere. I am not going to show you another big open area (this is simply taking too long to download all the pix) but to the left corner of this lane will be our Indian medicine wheel garden, herbs and citrus. It amazes me that the property has water everywhere to support  these ideas!

I have more pictures, but no time and this is enough to give you the basic feel of the place. For now, I must go get my daughter from school then head into work for a yoga teacher graduation ceremony. 
I feel so lucky to have a partner that shares my vision and willingness to work crazy hard for a dream. 
All I need is a direction and I found one…. I found several in fact….
Wish us luck…….

Crazy how long I spent posting this today on the off chance that my daughter someday will check in curious about how my life is unfolding. In case she does let me just say this, “I love you, Denver.”

 
This weekend, I took two of my primary yoga teachers, (and my daughter), to a Rodney Yee workshop in Miami. This was my staff’s Christmas bonus, and I sure am glad I made the commitment for us to attend. The seminar was not only highly educational, but tons of fun and good for our morale and feelings of connection to each other.   The weekend consisted of 4 three hour workshops taught by Rodney Yee and his wife, Colleen Saidmen, an insightful yoga teacher in her own right. The first day we worked on grounding poses, then had a three hour class on hip opening and another on backbends and on the last day we did a killer flow class. The focus on intense flexibility work and correct postures was a killer but these teachers were fun, filled with humor and wisdom.


On day one, Friday, we got there several hours early. As the first people in the huge ball-room sized studio, we were invited to set our mats up wherever we choose. We placed our mats about 8 inches away from Rodney and Colleen’s mat up front and center feeling lucky beyond belief. Needless to say, it was exciting to be so close and looking into the teacher’s eyes as they talked.But there are certain demands to being up front in view of over a hundred people in the room. The work was challenging, and thanks to our enthusiastic positioning we had to just plug through. 

On day two we chose to move to the second row and over to the side, thinking we might have been too eager at the beginning of the seminar. We no longer wanted to be on display as we struggled through the work. By Sunday, we were laughing about where we might be able to hide. We again came very early to the studio, but this time we did so wanting to get away from Rodney’s direct line of vision. We still wanted to see him though, so we ended up in the front row way off to the side of the room by the big pane glass windows where we could absorb the natural light and watch from afar. As it happens, Rodney spend more time in that corner than anyplace else in this session and he was nose to nose with me, lecturing and making corrections for much of the class. My staff laughed and said they were made uncomfortable with the way he crouched down and talked right at me for 5 minutes straight as he guided the class in a complex pose. They said it just seemed so intimate, but it didn’t make me the slightest bit self-conscious. He is a beautiful man, and a passionate and intimate teacher who truly is present in the process of sharing his yoga.  I just felt connected to the work and the intellectual understanding of it and I was honored that he thought I was worth speaking to directly.

(Neva and Melina crashing between classes.)


My daughter was amazing all weekend. She was the youngest person in the room, but just as focused as the mature hard core yogis attending. She has a huge range of motion, so she is able to handle even some of the most difficult poses. I caught glimpses of her in the class, her beautiful long neck and luminous skin making each pose seem so elegant. She had this soft expression in her eyes, and she was mastering some very difficult poses effortlessly. At one point, Rodney touched her foot and said, “I need to see less ballet, and more yoga in this room” and we all laughed knowing who he was referring too. But it was kind kidding rather than a reprimand and simply proof that she was being noticed.  Neva’s only complaint bout the weekend was  that much of the lecture material went over her head – not the physical stuff, but the Sanskrit terminology and the references to yoga philosophy and energetic plains, (talk about the nadi’s, chakras, and other eastern approaches to energetic fields and how to feel these things.) I told her to just absorb what she can and be patient with the rest, because it takes years to unfold and go deeper into yoga. There are multi levels of understanding and I’m still getting “ah ha” moments every day.  And much of it is still beyond my grasp or I have just an inkling of a bigger understanding. We all started where she is now, at the physical doorway where yoga is just poses and basic ideas of compassion and dealing with the world with integrity. There is a reason it is a lifetime study. When we got home, she asked to see a film that I reference often in conversations with my staff, one that is my ultimate favorite documentary, “I am.” I have seen it a dozen times and I’ve given it as gifts to others and I include it in my yoga training program when studying certain sutras. The movie, a study in humanity, consumerism, contentment, and connection,  was at the studio, but I promised her I’d watch it with her later this week. I was delighted. I absolutely loved how the physical experience of this yoga seminar tweaked her interest in a more spiritual and intellectual understanding of the practice.  She will be one heck of an amazing yogi someday.
 
(We didn’t feel it was acceptable to be taking pictures during the seminar, but I stole a few with my phone to mark the occasion. One of my staff, a fine yogi and Reiki master: Mandy Main)

Anyway, the thing I will remember most about the weekend is the laughter. We were all so sore the entire weekend from the intense flexibility work that we could barely walk. We ate our meals at Whole Foods and my right hand man, Melina, who teaches my RYT 200 teacher’s training with me, bought a huge bottle of organic defamatory vitamins which we were downing like candy. We laughed each time we had to stand up, or walk down stairs, or pick up a sock. We were groaning and hissing and making jokes about our decrepit state, which somehow struck us as funny. I guess you laugh so you won’t cry. We made jokes about “Rod”, our famous yogi bud, and made jokes about the studio, and jokes about our physical inadequacies and jokes about the weird questions or overall appearance of Miami students. It was good spirited teasing more than judgment. Our laughter was balanced out by some great talks about life and our relationships with work, money, love, yoga and more. The camaraderie and sharing of opinions and attitudes for three days made for a fantastic weekend.

For me, there were poignant personal moments too. I used to travel to teach dance seminars with my ex, and I couldn’t’t help but face a flood of memories of those past experiences as I watched this husband and wife teaching team work the audience. Life is interesting. As you grow and evolve, thanks to maturity distance and life lessons, you can look back and see your past with an entirely different perspective. I won’t go into detail, but I will say that the weekend offered me a lot to think about and some fresh insight about my work, my former marriage, and the surface experiences that formed my personality and career in certain ways. The revelations were not good or bad, just a new way of framing and processing memories of my former life. The older I get, the more reflective I seem to be. Yoga tends to uncover d
eeper truths which is sometimes uncomfortable, but always leads to an authentic acceptance of things as they are.

It was good to get home to soak in a bath. I called David to share news of the weekend wishing he had been there to experience it with me, but honestly, I don’t know if he could have handled all that hip opening flexibility stuff with his tighter body-type. He had to spend the weekend driving to Baltimore to collect his belongings and haul a trailer home and he told me he was so sore from driving and working on his boat, he must feel worse than I was feeling, but I insisted he didn’t know the meaning of sore. After describing some of the work we had done, he agreed that perhaps I was the winner of the “who’s more sore” contest.

I assumed I wouldn’t be able to walk on Monday, but shockingly I felt rather fine. I guess a bit of the hair that bit the dog helped. Everyone else on the trip had a quick recovery too. All that yoga always ends up good for the body as well as a person’s mood even if it is grueling at the time.

It is nice to get out of the rut and get some distance from your life, even if it is just for a working weekend. Now, I am back to the grind… but with a smile.

This weekend, I graduated a new class of yoga teacher trainees. It is always a poignant and sweet thing to send these lovely people off into the world to share their yoga with others. I get this incredible feeling of bittersweet joy each time I complete a program, and an overwhelming sense that my work is important. I do all I can to give my students the most comprehensive and inspirational yoga training experience possible because through these people my yoga stretches way beyond the boundaries of what I can do in my studio in my little corner of the world. I help each student embrace yoga for themselves, but I also know there is a ripple effect, and I in turn impact the lives of many others as my protege’s heal and learn to heal others through yoga. There is something truly special about being a mentor and a part of another person’s growth.


I lifted this picture from someone’s facebook page. Not everyone is in it, but it shows the kind of students who participate. (and reveals my nifty yoga training shirt they get with their names of their “yoga tribe” blazed across the back. ) The girl in the scarf. Melina Economis, is my assistant, and a finer yogi you’ll never meet. She is a serious buddhist, a strong yogi, and she also has a wicked sense of humor, which is probably why we can spend so much time together and actually smile when others would be grumbling. Boy do I look like I need a nap.. and some makeup and a savvier sweater! Eeesh.

Anyway, I always try to make the ceremony feel important to impress upon the family members who attend the graduation that it is a significant milestone to complete yoga training – a turning point in a person’s life. It certainly was for me. Perhaps all yoga training programs are not so personal or transformational, but I honestly feel my approach to understanding “big yoga” beyond the mat, is altering, if not for all, than certainly for some.

David helps me make every graduation special by producing a slide show for each group which we play on a big projector on the wall of the studio. It is always remarkable seeing this culmination of their journey, because the presentation displays the individual personalities of the students and the variety of experiences in this program.  The students don’t just learn posture focus and philosophy, but they get Reiki trained, aerial yoga certified, I take them on an outdoor retreat, learn journaling and/or zentangle, do chakra presentations, walk a meditative labyrinth, get smudged, and all kinds of yoga related studies. The students form remarkable friendships, gain personal insight, and grow as individuals. If you haven’t seen one of the yoga training slideshows, you really must check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfVgr5x_1I&feature=youtu.be

I am always harried and rushing to keep up on all the things we do at the studio, but I pause on this day set up the studio like a theater, serve cake, refreshments and wine, and in addition to a beautiful certificate I find a quote for each student that speaks of their unique special qualities or gifts. I talk about each one, and we do this silly symbolic thing of jumping a yoga mat to get to the other side – the side where they are now authentic teachers ready to take on the world.   We end the ceremony doing our last group circle – a tradition in my program. We join hands and each say one word that defines how we are feeling in the moment. The words are often funny, poignant or powerful. My word tends to teeter on the same thing each time. “Pride.”
 I suppose it all sounds corny, but each graduation is memorable for me. I am so fortunate to connect to so many creative, open-minded souls during the course of my work.

This weekend session is finally over, but  I am still working with yoga trainees in a day program and another program meets two evenings a week for 3 1/2 hours each night. On the 18th I’m staring a yoga training intensive  where I will teach 9-5 every day for 4 weeks (Mon through Friday) and while teaching this course I’ll still keep at my full schedule of dance classes and trainings in the week. It’s a crazy overload, but students keep signing up, and I add programs to attend to the need. Everyone of these programs will end by June when my recital is, and then I get a break.  After two weeks off, I’ll begin my summer yoga training program, but that’s all I’ll do this summer other than one dance training course in July . I have to keep my time relatively free because I may move my business – time will tell if I can work  out an opportunity to grow or change venues this season when my lease is up. I’m working on creative possibilities….. new ideas….. and new projects are always exciting.

Until then, now have undays off for 8 weeks or so so I can spend some time kyaking and walking the beach. Yippee!!!!!!!! Boy do I need the down time and a chance to get away from the studio. I would hate working so much if I didn’t absolutely love my work and the people I spend so much time with. If you must be busy, yoga is the thing to be busy with. But I miss nature and quiet and being alone too.

Anyway, another group moves on. I will miss them. but I send them off with a smile and hope for their journey to continue. I wish them every sucess in yoga, in life, and in their continued understanding of the world and their place in it. 
 
I am so humbled that I’ve been an important part of their yoga journey. I wonder if they understand that they too are a part of mine? To teach is to learn. I have learned a lot from my students.  About myself. Yoga. And life in all its complexity, richness, and never ending challenges. One thing is for sure. We are not alone. We are all connected. As they say, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.  Believing that puts life into a while new perspective – at least for me!  
   

A friend once told me my life moves uncommonly fast. He said that if he didn’t read my blog regularly he would be totally lost because my life evolves and changes more than the average person. After a break, he said checking in was like turning in to the middle of a movie and having no clue of who the characters are or what was going on in the plot. At the time, I felt he was just teasing me, because when you are in the thick of your life, it feels as if progress and change is cumbersome and painfully slow. Yet every time I take a few months off of writing, I come back to the page and think “Where can I possibly begin to explain all that has changed since last time I wrote a blog entry.” All I know is my silence is always due to the simple fact that I’ve been tossed some huge challenges to overcome these past years, and it has taken all my time, attention, and effort to overcome them and turn my problems into opportunities for growth and fresh beginnings. My blog breaks have never been a lack of writing discipline- more a sign of priority demands forcing my energies elsewhere.  But, oh how I miss writing and the insight it gives me.

Anyway, I’ve been busy this past year, working harder than can be described.  My life bottomed out and I had no choice but to dig in and begin repairing the damage.  So, for some time now I’ve been working 7 days a week at building a business (three in fact) to repair financial damage. Meanwhile, I work at my new romantic relationship to repair and overcome the emotional upheaval that comes when someone you love throws you under a bus without blinking. Painful.  I also put a great deal of focus on my parenting to repair the painful, family damage that had my daughter unstable a mere year ago and me in a panick over it. All told, I had a mountain of issues to face.  But one by one, I keep thrusting the shovel in and moving a small mound of dirt at a time. This kind of labor at my age makes a gal sore and tired but low and behold, my mountains are more like hillsides now, on the way to becoming rolling hills planted with beautiful blooms. Yes, the landscape of my life is taking shape, and not a day goes by that I don’t pause to notice and celebrate all I have to be grateful for. My business has planted roots and it is sprouting in all kinds of directions. It’s taxing energetically but exciting.  My daughter is healthy, beautiful and the joy of my life. My romantic life is truly lovely. I’m still just getting used to being treated with authentic love and respect and Wow, to be valued and appreciated for what I contribute to our life is a humbling thing. 

So since I can’t write about everything, I should pick one thing. Today, I will write about my business pursuits and the funny ways new doors keep opening.

When your life crashes, you have to pause and take stock of what you have to work with begin anew. My financial and emotional resources were extremely limited, but I had no choice but do something and fast. I had to make a living or the little I did have would soon be gone.   Healing is never easy, and all I can say is yoga saved me. Sometimes I think my life bottoming out was meant to be because it gave me first hand knowledge of true depression and personal pain and I am a much more compassionate individual because of it. Most importantly, I understand the power of yoga now and in that way, my hardships were a precious gift because they brought me to a deeper understanding of life and what I believe separates a truly decent and well meaning person from those who give lip service to their beliefs yet don’t act according to them.

Anyway, I had a little money, but no home, no car, and no prospects and while I wanted to just invest in a comfortable living situation, considering my lack of work experience in anything other than being a small business owner, I knew I had no choice but to start a new business.   I sure wasn’t up for the task at hand emotionally. The sheer idea of starting a business again after the relief and joy I felt upon retiring (an early retirement I believed I had earned and very much needed since I had sacrificed “living” for “working” for twenty years in a quest to meet the endless responsibilities and financial demands of those I lived with). Well, that had been tossed away like yesterday’s newspaper, and all the angst and excuses in the world wouldn’t make a dent in the cost of raising children or prepare me for a future retirement or even take care of the immediate crisis of my getting by and supporting myself in a responsible way.  So I opened ReFlex, meditating and doing whatever it took to maintain a good attitude and be effective and functional when I really just wanted to give up on everything. Trust me, it wasn’t easy.

As it soon became apparent, ReFlex was two businesses in one. The school was in one part a dance studio – a choice I made for practical reasons because there was no learning curve to that element and as my dad liked to tease, “The chckens always go home to roost.” It felt like a safe choice and in some ways the only thing I could count on. But the business was also a yoga studio. I loved and believed in yoga and I felt drawn to see what I could do with it. All of my life experienced seemed to be a training to prepare me for this practice. I felt  yoga had a deeper purpose and that  the work was filled with significance and purpose that was not only inspirational, but a perfect fit for my new stage in life.  OK, I admit, Yoga was also a logical choice considering the market place and the holistic mindset of society today.

I won’t’ go into too much detail about my innitial busines pursuits, except to say that the first year was a nightmare because I counted on dance to carry me and cover overhead, but that division of the studio limped along  (and still does.) wounding my ego while wreaking havoc on my long term business plan.  Yoga had a slow start as well, but that made sense because I was starting from scratch in a competitive field during a recession. Ah well.
In effort to survive, I had to think of something quick. So I decided to educate myself in yoga beyond my early beginnings so I could bring more to the table as a teacher. I enrolled and completed a yearlong RYT -500 programs to enhance my credentials. Meanwhile I became chair yoga certified, children’s yoga certified and I stared studying things like energy systems, bhandas, Buddhism and other related interests.   I dove into all kinds of metaphysical and new age studied partially because I found this world fascinating and partly because I needed to understand and connect to the yoga world if it was going to be my business. I became a Reiki healer, but even my reiki mentor gently teased me and said, “I just can’t tell if you really believe what I’m teaching or if you are just here out of an academic interest.”

That was a fair criticism because I often would come home and say to David (who has gone through much of this training with me) “I feel the jury is still out on that one…..” This would set off all kinds of deep, intellectual conversations on quantum physics, reiki, universal energy, astrology etc….. All of which helped me embrace things that might otherwise seem a bit out there for me to feel comfortable trusting. I am one who needs to come through the doorway of logic and science to accept those things that are hard to prove.

Anyway, I should point out that I believe in tons of stuff that a few short years ago I would have poo pooed. And I have deep spiritual beliefs that you couldn’t shake now with all the logic in the world.  I am a practicing Buddhist who meditates and studies at the Kadampa Meditation Center in Sarasota. I practice Reiki, and spend the bulk of my time watching new age metaphysical documentaries.&n
bsp; In every case I come away with a deeper understanding of life and the difference between our physical, astral, and comos levels.   Yep, I’ve become one of those crazy yoga types.

But at the same time, I am as logical – no MORE logical and down to earth than I ever was before. I feel grounded in this new understanding of the human existence.  My only regret is that I am so busy; I have no time to write about it. Well, that time will come later. The point is, yoga helps me find balance which helps me life a productive life that is filled with meaning and poignancy.

I am knocking off two birds with one stone here. Yoga is my business…. and a beautiful right livlihood it is. But it is also an adventure.

Anyway, I channeled all that training into my business in the form of a yoga teacher training program which has become the backbone of my entire business now. The average yoga studio in Sarasota (some have been in business dozens of years) trains about 12-16 people a year in their RYT-200 programs. I have been offering my program for 18 months now and I’ve done 6 complete sessions due to some innovative formats and good marketing. In no time, I’ve gained the reputation for the strongest program around, and now word of mouth brings new yoga teachers my way every session. As result, I’ve trained over 85 yoga teachers in just over a year, and over 100 yoga teachers in specialty courses such as aerial yoga and chair yoga. Next year, I’m offering an advanced RYT-500 program and I have lots of people ready to sign up. It’s quite amazing! I work way too much, but I love what I do and I’m very good at it. Each session the program grows stronger. I have a remarkably good assistant. Teaching has always been my gift and teaching this level of yoga seems a perfect fit for me.
 
Considering my school more of a training facility now than a yoga school, I’ve been trying to get a Reiki master’s program off the ground, but it is still in the infancy stage, and next year I’m adding prenatal yoga and children’s yoga to the training courses. I am in a yearlong Ayurveda course to become an Ayurveda counselor – something I will write about later, but this too is bound to open doors to new programs and services at my school. I even have dreams of producing ayurvedic oils and homopathic products with natural herbs etc…. for sale.

I have to teach a Kiddance seminar this summer if I am to maintain quality in my dance studio,  so I thought I might as well add this to my official training programs and make children’s dance education training formally available to others. I am working on a website to pull that company from the ashes, with a slight name and format change, and now I have to find time to overhaul my syllubus and rework the material so it isn’t dated and reflects all I’ve learned in these past years. I’m actually adding much of what I’ve learned in yoga to my teaching methods now.  I hired a company to make me a new logo and someone is building a Kiddance Concepts website. I might really do something different with this program this time around….. and this may be the window into a new children’s yoga program. Hummmmm…..

 
Obviously, I am going in many directions, but I am excited by the new journey I’m on, and the very best part of it all is that it connects me with beautiful people who have kindness and compassion in their heart.  My crowd is a bunch of socially conscientious, giving people who care about others. They are reiki healers, yogis, tai chi, vegans or energy workers, quick to lend a hand, offer a shoulder to cry on, and go out of their way to serve others. I only seem to attract dancers now who have generous artistic spirits. I love that working with children bring laughter and playfulness into my days. Yep, if you believe that the company we keep alters our perception of the world and we rise or fall (ethically, energetically etc..) depending on our companions (I do) then I couldn’t find a better way to protect and nurture my best self than through going to work each day and interacting with my yoga and dance peeps.

More on this later – I’ll write a “beautiful people” blog someday to introduce the colorful, kind characters that fill my world.

Back to the business subject….
So since my school is all about training programs and yoga now I decided to split out the yoga and dance businesses – I know I announced that in a previous blog and shown pictures of my second school . But as this year closes, I have to decide whether or not to sign another lease. I know my dance studio is solid where it is, and I love how dance keeps me grounded and balanced and in touch with my original self. But I keep thinking I could do more with yoga. So I’m on this crazy quest to find a chunk of land for a yoga retreat center where I hope tol move my trainings and offer retreats and healing courses for others. I have this clear vision of what could be – a place where nature is a soothing accompaniment to yoga or writing or art courses – a place individuals go to explore their inner world. 

In my search, I stumbled upon 18 acres with a huge 6000 square foot metal building I could convert into a yoga training studio. The grounds are amazing, it is only 10 minutes from HWY 75 and the land is private, beautiful, and some of it is even fenced for animals or whatever. (Yes, I daydream of going back to Georgia to get my donkey and bringing him home… silly I know, but I assign such meaning to that animal and all the broken dreams I associate to him. I’d love to reclaim a piece of my heart.) If I had 18 acres, I would definitely keep bees to provide all the honey I need for my tea room atthe studio, and set up a huge herb garden for students to care for too.  I imagine a permanent Buddha walking trail there and a big fire pit for students to gather around for Kirtan or conversations. I can see myself offering night retreats (full moon yoga) and writing retreats and corporate retreats and … well…. The possibilities are endless. So that is my project now. Financing it will demand creativity, but I have three years behind me of paying huge rent and my business is finally thriving in a solid way, so I believe I can find a way. And frankly, my training programs are so strong that they alone can support the cost of the land. And that is not taking into account all I can do a resource like that to work with.  I will be the only person in this area with a retreat center, and this kind of enriching, holistic yoga training experience. People can take a learning vacation. Connect to nature and eachother. Nice!

I don’t do anything without a business plan, so I had to come up with a name. David is a master at creative names and he came up several ideas, but the one I liked best was Chakra Garden. I nabbed Chakragardencenter for a website, and charkragardengoods for the products I hope to produce and sell there in sa future art gallery, herbal product store (that is a whole different enterprise I’m working on.) and I contacted a company in India to  design my logo which I then trademarked.  Ha, I don’t even have a place to put this business yet, but I am acting as if I do. David says things happen for me because I manifest them through positive thinking and good energy and effort. I hope he is right in this case.

So while I am finishing three separate yoga
training programs, and preparing a recital in the dance studio and starting a new import business (not yet explained) I am also trying to look at land and buildings etc… to see what opportunities for growth for my business might be out there before I sign another lease. Sigh.

Now you might think all this sounds crazy or as if I have forgotten one important thing about yoga – to have balance  in your life.  But I have learned that my efforts are not what they seem on the surface. I don’t work all the time because I want to make money or because I’m a workaholic. I am a person with a gift for building things. I push the envelope because it gives me pleasure to create and build something out of nothing. Yes, it isn’t the bottom line I’m looking at, but the endless potential and possibilities for personal growth and giving something to the world. I like being a part of something bigger than me and my little interests… If I wake up and one day have something to show for my efforts that will be nice. But honestly, not a day goes by that I am not proud of what I’ve done already, even if finances are rocky or the effort seems to outweigh the monentary rewards. It simply isn’t about producing income as much as it is about producing a yoga community, a remarkable dance school, a program where we foster free reiki shares and community programs to give back to others, and a chance to learn something new and see what I’m capable of….

Since I keep mentioning my import business and new doors opening, I perhaps will say a short thing about that project too. I started selling yoga swings when I started my training programs a year ago. I found a company who makes them in Bali and I started placing big orders so I could get swings manufactured at a reasonable wholesale cost to sell them in my store and on E-bay. This was just a little side enterprise; the income is like mad money, always an unexpected bonus. I only made about 6K last year off of swings– not exactly a windfall,  but it has been fun and it takes no effort really. David and I both keep saying that when we get some time, we will design an online store and offer additional products. We are forever coming up with witty T-shirts and seeing things that we believe would sell in a new age online store.

That got me thinking about imports and yoga stuff. So I started reading books on import businesses and how customs work etc…. And one thing led to another and as often happens with me, I couldn’t resist doing a bit of trial and error shopping to learn what works and what doesn’t.  And before you knew it I was in the thick of starting a new yoga fashion import business. I found two big glass jewelry display cases on Craigslist and David and I went in the truck to pick them up. We set one up in both the dance and yoga studio. Then I started ordering bulk jewelry pieces from Tibet and Nepal. I mostly order reiki and yoga designs, pendants, bracelets and such handmade in India. They are beautiful works of art. This week I added yoga scarfs. Yep, I’m finding all kinds of gorgeous stuff as I learn about economies of scale and how to order across cultural boundaries etc…  And like everything else I do, I’m doing it on a shoestring in a grass roots sort of way. David has offered to take money out of his retirement account to invest in this project because he says, “I absolutely believe you can do anything you set your mind to, and you will be successful at any project.” But I rather do it on my own, at least at this point – when I gather all the info I need to understand what I’m doing without error, I will write a business plan and see if I need outside financial help.I don’t believe my enthuasiasm and experiements should put anyone else at risk. 



I started with the idea that I might make some yoga jewelry  to sell in the studio for fun and extra income. My years in Georgia got me all into home crafting and exploring handmade art. I took over a dozen courses at the Campbell school on basketing making, pottery, caining, jewlery making etc…. But for all that I love the artistic outlet of home crafting, you can not produce fair income after expenses to make up for the time it takes nor do if you have bills to pay. I loved the idea of crafting when we were retired with enough insavings to live responsibly for the rest of our years, but to consider having to make tons of this stuff to pay my electric bill would turn me into a factory worker. So, for me, homemade yoga wear will be something I do for medatitive creativity, a relaxing pursuit to enjoy and I’ll also create original pieces just for me or as gifts for special friends. For business purposes, I’ll leave the cranking out of goods to the indian artists.  And I look forward to traveling for purchasing so thereis always that to look forward to. Anyway, I have been buying reiki and chakra stones and healing crystals, chakra pendants, turquoise and silver om pendants, carved yak bone braclets etc… I have om silk scarves coming, and energy wands and other goodies. The purchasing is fun -I am bargain hunting with numbers in the thousands ofminimum order to get prices down. I’m looking for quality, talking to people who speak broken englishandhave different senses of manners or how to communicate. I’m keeping track of numbers, working out risk and COGS and all that fun business stuff that makes a dream suddenly look like a makeable putt.       
  
I am starting with products for sale in my business and on a new e-bay store. But I’m designing a program for resale for yoga studios so people like me who want to earn extra income selling yoga wear but don’t have tons of money to invest can get a variety of products at a fair cost to start yoga fashion sales in their studios. And that got me thinking about yoga jewelry parties and how the Tupperware company got started and finding ways to get distributors and reprentatives for a new company that will include yoga teachers and well….. let me just say that I a cooking up a remarkably interesting idea about a new company based on yoga imports and yoga teachers sharing more than yoga with others.. More on this as the idea unfolds.

Anyway, the end of it all is my business pursuits keep me busy 24/7. But I am enjoying the process, and learning all kinds of things about the world beyond dance or farming. I am evidently aware of my age and that this is my time to earn, produce and contribute before aging slows me down. I do miss quiet days, my barn, nature, and sleep. But a walk on the beach now and then grounds me and I often remind myself that life unfolds in cycles and I am working hard now so I don’t have to later. And every door that opens leads me someplace wonderous.

OK, I have indulged myself in enough writing time for today. These bIogs take time. I am long winded, but to do anything right means
not skiming the surface. I beleive wholely in savoring the time and space to say what you feel like saying and if people on the other end have too short an attention span to stay with it, sad for them.

Still, I need to clean my house. And my car. Life is a demanding taskmaster at this place and time. This weekend I am graduating a class of yoga trainees and I have to make their certificates today and plan what I will say about each student. I have to go to Sams to pick up wine and a big cake. In dance areas, I have a new acrobatics teacher that I will be watching teach on Saturday who plans to join the school and bring some students and  I have some serious recital planning and choreography to do this weekend so. Must change hats to be in dance mode. But tonight I am teaching a three hour journaling course to a dozen yogis.  Another hat. Eeesh. At least writing isn’t’ work.I adore teaching others to write! Thatis not all I adore. In a bit I have to pick Neva up from school and she will gush about her day and demand I buy her an icy.She wants to be taken back to school at 5 to see a show her friends are in and I will head back to work then to teach journaling. Neva knows she always gets top priority when it comes to my time and attention, so we will enjoy our short connection and talk about our day and before you know it we will head in different directions again. meanwhile, David has a new job in Sarasota (he is on day two of a new position after losing his job last week- he went a total of 4 days without employment – the big slacker. That is another long story I will share one day, but all I know is I’m glad he’s home, and he has mentioned more than once that I probably manifested the change. Ha. Wish I was that powerful…..

Anyway, we will end at 9:30 after my writing class. We will share a glass of wine andI will hearall about his take on his new employment and tell him about my day’s accomplishments and frustrations. Never a lack of things to share after busy days such as these. I assume he will read this blog (he’s a fan of my writing) so at least hehas a head start…..

Life isn’t easy, but it is good. And tomorrow is an adventure yet to unfold…. 

David moved to Baltimore last weekend. Amazing how life can change so abruptly. One minute we were looking at land, contemplating opening a bed and breakfast, and the next, he had a job offer that was simply too good to refuse.

He tried saying no at first. Insisted there was simply no way he was going to leave me. But the employer kept sweetening the offer until they were offering twice what he makes now, and the position included a free apartment for six months too. And great potential for the future. We both agreed that his taking the job was probably the best path for us to meet our goals as a couple because it provides him with opportunity and added resources to “clean up” the obligations from his past – the problem that stands in the way of our pursuing our own dreams.

I admit there is a part of me that would have loved to just toss aside my life here and gone with him. I would adore a new adventure and living someplace new. Wouldn’t mind escaping the stress and drudgery of work and focusing on a relationship and family rather than growing a business. I could take care of him and spend a year writing again and perhaps teach some yoga and no doubt make as much as I make now (but with less potential for more). But it is not in me to give up on anything I start, and my business is turning a corner and gaining momentum. Actually, I was in the midst of negotiating an expansion with my landlord that very week because I believe that at the rate I’m going, I’ll soon have two successful businesses demanding my attention soon if I take steps now to break the yoga and children’s dance divisions apart. The problem is, we were counting on David to do the electrical work and construction during after hours, and he was going to teach a few yoga evening classes as well to help get the project off the ground (something he was looking forward to doing to push his own yoga forward too.). So now I have to rethink the master plan. Won’t go so smoothly without him. Am I ready for that much additional work? 

The biggest consideration of all is my daughter, of course. Neva came to me a year ago in a highly disturbed state. She was very confused about who she was and had trouble coping. I’ve spent a full year doing everything in my power to give her stability and help her become whole again. And my efforts apparently took hold. She is happy and well-adjusted now-not only active, and interested in life, but determined to become a young woman with substance. She cares about others, does volunteer work, and has this wonderful sense of humor and logic that I much admire. I am proud that despite what was a very difficult situation I helped her rediscover her best self. I have only two and a half years of raising children left. This time with Neva is more important than any choice that would represent me indulging in my own personal ambitions and David knows and understands this. Our time as a couple will come soon enough. For now, Neva and my determination to establish my own financial independence is a priority.

There were other factors to make David’s move a sensible choice. This new job brings him back to engineering – work he finds engaging and challenging. It’s good for his self-esteem to be in a job where his talent is recognized. For the last year, he’s been working as a computer programmer in a job where he is overqualified and underpaid. He only took the position to be near me. When his former company grew more and more unstable and his paychecks fell in thousands in arrears, he hung in there as long as he could with a noble sense of devotion to the company’s mission. Eventually it became clear he had to move on so he sent out resumes and had some nice leads, but his focus was on finding any kind of job in Sarasota to move near me. The first job offer he got he took. But it was a struggle financially.

So now, he can get back to his career and get life functioning properly. Which means, we will be apart for 6-12 months. We are not unfamiliar with long distance dating. After all, that is how we began. We met online and began a friendship through thoughtful messages passed back and forth. Those exchanges gave us room to explore our life attitudes and personality as we shared our perceptions and experiences in colorful, well-constructed letters (we are both writers, so this was a good medium for us.) He found out I wrote a book and insisted I send it to him, so I did. He read it in a few days and offered me some insightful feedback (from a professional standpoint) but later confessed that it was the book that made him fall head over heels in love. Reading the book helped him learn what makes me tick and gave evidence of my softer, philosophical nature. He admired my talent (his opinion, not mine) and the way I tried to follow my heart and embrace an adventure with a good attitude regardless of things turned out in the end. He loves my survival instinct and the way I tried to keep my family on track, but was logical enough to let go and do the right thing to fix the broken life in the end. He loves that I taught a woman to read and gave of myself to others when I had the money and leisure to focus on me….  By the time we had our first date, he said he was already so smitten he was ready to get married…. Seriously. And more so after he saw me in the flesh (I’ve kidded him about his  belief that I was “the one” so soon more than a little.) Me, I’m carrying too much baggage to trust anyone with my future so easily.

I guess our engaging in a bit of romantic writing again will be fun, even though it can’t take the place of more tangible interaction. He is scheduled to become lead engineer in 9 months when the top guy is due to retire (that is the corporate plan) and they should be ready by then to move into a manufacturing phase on the designer project David is heading. David will be in charge of the process, drawing from experience. In the past he owned a successful engineering manufacturing company. They said he could set up the plant anywhere he wanted if he made it financially feasible for the company– Sarasota or St. Pete asre possibilities. We know there are great incentives for companies to set up shop here. So one reason he choose to give this career opportunity a shot is because there is a good chance he will end up back here in a very promising long term position. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in the short term to accomplish what you want in the long term. Time will tell.

Since we only had two weeks to prepare for his leaving, we were in a flurry of organization. He did things that made me laugh, such as bringing home two new toilets that he insisted on installing. To my knowledge, there was nothing wrong with my toilets.

I said, “Why are you installing new toilets when we have so much to do?”
He said, “You don’t think I’d leave you with toilets that clog, do you? I had planned to do this ever since we moved, so now it has to be a priority…”
As if my welfare or happy existence was going to be threatened if I had to occasionally reach for a plunger. Ha.

He hung hooks for my robe and took all our storage from the garage to his storage unit – took care of my QuickBooks at work and did all kinds of small honey-dos. He bought me a new computer and set it up so I don’t have to keep wrestling with my semi-broken laptop. All things we planned to get to one of these days, but suddenly they became a now or never thing… I can finally send my laptop off to be repaired and keep functioning with school and work projects. I’m so grateful that he cares about my ability to keep life flowing smoothly. 

Then he decided to cut a huge limb off the backyard monster tree because I’ve been complaining about all the moss and leaves that fall from that limb to the back porch. Big mistake.

I will not go into too much detail, but he ended up falling 9 feet off the ladder with a chainsaw in hand because the limb crashed into the ladder. We spent all day in the hospital emergency room. The chainsaw cut his neck (needed stiches) and he cracked ribs, dislocated his collarbone, sprained his wrist and was in a cast. One entire side of his body was bruised and cut up. He ended up with poison ivy on his private parts – don’t ask me how. So the last few days, he was all broken and sore and frustrated because he wanted to do so much more than he could to set me up for being alone and this all put a serious damper in our spending a few romantic days together before he left.

That accident scared me beyond description. I’ve never known anyone to be heartier or healthier than David. He is 59 and the strongest person I know. Most people his age have back issues, or health problems or take medications. David never complains, can lift anything, can run miles, never gets sick, doesn’t take any kind of pill other than vitamins, and downplays any injury or ach or pain. He is a health marvel. But after the fall, he couldn’t get up despite trying. I panicked. He was dizzy and he lost his sight for several minutes. He couldn’t remember the names of the people that he works with or anything short term. His neck was gushing blood. I was hovering over him, bringing him something to lie on and then I tried to help him to a lawn chair, all the while trying to figure out the damage, imagining that if that chainsaw had moved just a few inches, I’d be there holding on to him as the life drained out of his body. It was horrifying. Hekept saying he was fine, he just needed a minute, then he would fall back to the ground. He asked me to help him move him to the bedroom, which I did, deeply worried at the sway in his step, and he then actually voiced concern and apologized that he was getting blood all over the place – as if I would possibly care about dirt and blood when he was hurt. You kidding me?

The next day, he was all  broken, wincing and making subtle expressions of pain as he used his one good arm to get back to packing up boxes in the garage to take to goodwill and unload 30 bales of pine straw for the garden that I had purchased on Groupon that we needed to pick up before the coupon expired. I kept telling him to let these things go, I could handle things myself – I’m equally as hearty as he is. But he can’t help but feel it’s his place as the man to get things done. I so appreciate that about him.

Two days later he had to drive his truck towing a huge trailer that is outfitted to be a testing lab for engineer projects for 156 hours. He was still all broken and his wrist so sore. I felt so badly for him, worse because now I was not available to care for him or at least distract him from his misery.

Anyway, David is in Baltimore. Ginny is sad.

My house is spotless…. It is like I don’t know what to do without him so I keep cleaning. He’s been gone 4 days and I’ve cleaned my floors, then the laundry, then my car, then the garage, then my closet, and then straightened all my drawers and the household closets….. Even cleaned my dog. Then I put little lights in the silk tree in my living room and put some spotlights on the shelf to highlight some artwork there and mastered a hidden cord down the back of a wall hanging… everything looks romantic, artistic and amazing.

I have a huge hankering to put up my Christmas tree. Ha, a bit too soon, I know, obviously I’m nesting because I feel a bit ungrounded. I’m going to opt for putting out a few nice Halloween &/or fall decorations to make the place feel festive, and turn my attention to my new school activities (I’m in a yearlong course to get certified as an Ayurveda practioner – a yoga related endeavor). I cant sleep at night so I’m diving into building the new season at my business – the studio is growing in the best of ways. I’m reading all those books that are stacked on my nightstand – books about the human energy system, quantum physics and Eastern philosophy (I’m scheduled to teach a 500 hour yoga advanced training next fall, and it will take me all year to prepare the material and figure out what books to assign and what material I want to include so I’m buried in films and reading material as I structure the program.) I’m on a diet thanks to the fact that I no longer end every day with a glass of wine – our bad habit we have become accustomed to as we share news about the day, so I’m going to the gym again and finally started scheduling massage and facials at the studio for myself since I’m supposed to do this each month as part of my employee exchange but usually I’m too busy to take advantage of the perk. Obviously, I’m keeping busy to not feel lonely.

Life changes in a minute. You can be moseying along content as all get out and suddenly a job or a fall or an unexpected event can upset the cart. Time to rearrange all the contents of the cart to find balance once again. Thanks to yoga, I’m all about balance and being flexible now. I suppose this kind of life change could be treated as a big drama, but I choose to see it as a chance to regroup, clean my mental house (as well as my physical one) and remaster the grand plan.

I’m back to the drawing board…. getting creative. This seems to be a major theme in my life…..

A few weeks ago, my little baby lovebirds started peeking out of the nesting box. Suddenly, one brave guy stepped out onto the perch and flapped his wings as if to take a huge breath. It was the first  fresh breath and space he ever experienced. He went back in, but an hour later, took another shot at exploring the outside world. This time, one of his siblings followed. I decided to lift the top off the nesting box to let some sunlight and fresh air into their stale, dark space. The birds chirped happily and started popping their head out of the box, and an hour or so later, they even dared to sit on the rim. Within two days, all 5 birds were out on perches looking confident, happy and exuberant with freedom.
They had little patches of down still filtering through their feathers, but mostly, they looked like mature birds . I suddenly couldn’t tell them apart from the parents.

Knowing I didn’t need 7 lovebirds, I listed the 5 baby lovebirds on craigslist. Within an hour someone called to take two of the birds. The caller told me their family had lovebirds for over 12 years, and one died a few months ago, and just that morning, the partner bird finally left this world. The son and father wanted to buy my lovebirds as a surprise for  Mom so she wouldn’t be sad. I thought that lovely. My birds were going to a good, caring home. Till death do us part. That is true lovebird commitment. 

Now, I had 5 birds making a mess on my porch, and things were getting worse because a squirrel ate his way through the screen to get to the seeds and nuts he spied around the cage, and he keeps coming in to explore and raid the bird cage. When my dog spies the squirrel in his territory, he runs out and chases the poor animal all over, knocking over plants and candles as the panicked squirrel tries to get away. I have gone out a few times trying to shoo the squirrel away with a broom, and each time I do, I move cautiously. I have visions of getting bitten and succumbing to rabies and dying a painful and ugly death. I’d fix the hole in the screen, but I know that as long as the bird is out there, the squirrel will do more damage and return. Squirrels, cute and innocent as they are (they are just following instinct when they get annoying) still do not belong on a person’s porch. Especial when each time this happens, the birds go crazy, flap about and cause the gravel on the bottom of their cage to spread about the porch, also making a mess.   I spend the little quiet time I have out on that porch, drinking coffee, looking at the trees and quiet nature behind my house, contemplating life. I NEED a clean porch more than I can describe. It’s my haven – a little patch of solitude and nature in a life that misses her former expanse of forest, pasture and soft breezes.

So,  the next day, when someone else called wanting all 5 of the babies, I sold them all even though it meant I would no longer have lovebirds.  I have had my fun raising the babies. It was an animal adventure that touched my heart, reminding me of the fun I had with nature in Georgia. Kind of bittersweet to be raising animals again, only in Florida, missing the space and opportunity I once had, but at the same it being reminded of the glorious promise of unlimited life possibility that was mine for a short while.

In the end I made about 150 bucks on my lovebird adventure . Not bad- considering I had fun in the process. That is the way of animals. In Georgia, I bought animals, but in the end sold them for almost what I paid. In some cases (when my horse had a baby) I made enough money on the offspring to pay for the cost of the animal’s upkeep for many months. In the case of an animal being attacked and killed (my baby llama or chickens) I ended up losing on the entire experiment. But the memories were precious and will be with me always – the good and bad.  All told, I spent several years enjoying animal explorations. Once, during my divorce, I finally put the entire cost of food, health care and animal acquisition on paper just to see what the investment cost me over the entire time I was there. The total was far more minimal than I expected. Not unlike buying a boat and selling it later for a bit less, but knowing you had a great time on the water in the meantime. I didn’t regret or feel guilty about the small fun I had in Georgia after that revelation.

When I delivered the last of my lovebirds to the new owner (we met outside of Target) she inquired about whether or not I had any other birds. I told her about Whynot, my mini macaw and she offered to buy him as well because she wants to fill a huge indoor aviary her husband has built for her. Again, I could have sold this bird for more than I paid for him so it was tempting.  I told her I’d think about it and she said she’d call the next week. She hasn’t called yet, and I’m rather glad. I honestly don’t know what I’ll say if she makes the offer again. 

The problem is, Christmas is coming, and between the squirrel and the coming cold, I know the bird will need to be moved inside again. The place where I put his cage indoors happens to be where I plan to put my Christmas tree, and so the thought of becoming a no-bird girl again has appeal. But each time I sit quietly outside and enjoy a few moments of connection with this quiet, lovely pet, I feel I’m meant to hang on to him. For some people, commitment is flighty. But for me, it is hard to let go of anything I care about.

I often hang on to something even when it doesn’t make sense. When this involves people or promises, I know its because I have a serious problem with giving up on anyone or any situation until there is absolutely no chance, even a long shot, to make things work. When it involves “things” I recognize it’s because I make associations between things and events in my life. All around me are small, simple objects that are packed with meaning and no one but me will ever know the triggers they are for feelings or memories … or inspiration. I like it that way. Life has not been easy, but it has been fascinating and filled with soulful moments. I guess I like having things near me that are reminders of where I’ve been, who I’ve shared experiences with , and all the subtle reminders of a full, big life that is still unfolding, revealing secrets and endless lessons. Life is in the details and I want to always stay mindful of the details.


  

Anyone interested in seeing my teachers in action will enjoy the slideshow I posted today on youtube of this weekend’s graduating class. It’s a brief way to glimpse the faces and personalities, as well as a general idea  of the intimate  journey into yoga I share with others……  These are the kinds of people who fill my world now…. My work is filled with introspective questions, smiles, laughter, tears (tears of recovery, just to be perfectly clear) and so much more.

http://youtu.be/fxBRgvqGNP0
My summer course featured a yoga therapy session with a 20 hour chair yoga certification. In order to fit this in, I could not give them an outdoor retreat day, but I figured summer is so hot they might be happy to forego a day in nature. Still I missed the bonding experience of breaking bread and doing a practice outdoors.

http://youtu.be/RDGonl0EwwM  Spring 2012

http://youtu.be/S3CUGvOd77I        Fall 2011

My spring training did include a day outdoors doing yoga, journaling and canoing as well as my now famous buddha trail in the woods. I’ll share that RYT video too just to show how different each yoga training experience is. Ah heck, as long as I’m at it, I’ll post the previous (first) course too. That is the one where I trained David along with 18 others. That session, the entire process of yoga training was new for everyone – including me. I learned a great deal, and my program has evolved since. Every course gets more organized, defined and I get stronger as a trainer and have so much more to offer. So check out the slideshows and then, I’ll talk about my summer…

Last but not least, as long as you are enjoying videos, you have to check out my aerial yoga slideshow. This reveals that quirky, fun side of yoga that has served to put my school on the map. It has been so fun diving into a new adventure, and aerial yoga broke the mold for me.
Love it.

http://youtu.be/8TztvqldoFI

O.K. Now for the official blog post of rambling thought.

I just finished teaching a yoga immersion course at the same time I taught regular summer dance and yoga classes, ending with a two week daily dance intensive – all which means I worked 7 weeks without a day off. You can throw into the mix a weekend chair yoga training course and an aerial yoga training course for teachers too.That kind of schedule would be grueling by most people’s standards, and yet, it wasn’t as physically taxing as I expected. I truly love what I do- there is a crazy wonderful balance about teaching dance with all it’s passion and aggressive power and teaching yoga with its calm, reflective focus.

They say dance is external movement  while yoga is internal movement. I see the two as the yin and yang of movement and my relationship with both at this stage of life somehow blends to give me balance. Mostly I love that I can  draw from my past, my present and my dreams for the future to help a diverse range of students learn about themselves, their bodies, art and the art of living. I now work with young people as well as mature people and both spectrums offer a different kind of life insight and energy. Perhaps I just come to the table with deeper appreciation for my work having left it for awhile, or perhaps the fact that I am no longer influenced by others who felt less sincerely connected to the process of giving through art (for them, art was more about what it gave to them personally rather than a way to give to others) has provided me with permission to celebrate what I love and not appologise for my wanting to dive in and devote energy, resources, and time to this karma process.

Anyway, I will miss he wonderful 16 people I had the intimate and intense experience of yoga training with. They were a diverse, funny, insightful group. Sisters in heart, one and all.

My yoga training course is far more comprehensive than what I was exposed to in my own yoga teacher training.  My teachers were wonderful and the school authentic,  so I am in no way implying they didn’t do a great job, but the program didn’t cover many things I feel necessary to prepare teachers for a career in the field. I sure had to fill gaps left and right to do the job correctly. So now, my students learn all the basics of posture focus and anatomy (a far more comprehensive anatomy section than what I received) as well as in-depth study of the yoga sutras and chakras as defined by yoga alliance. But I also give them level one Reiki training, as well as certification in aerial yoga. Then, because I think it is so important for yoga teachers to understand the wide berth of yoga and the systems of training that are popular so they can work with a diverse population of students and know the differences in style, attitude and form, I introduce them to the theory and practice of yin yoga, kundlini, hot/power yoga, ashtanga, Iyengar & restorative, and I throw in fun stuff like partner yoga. I teach them journaling and meditation too. I stuff so much into the training that every moment is filled with productive work. They have to come in for three extra hours during the week to practice if they want down time to review.   My 200 hour course actually takes 230 hours. The students end by teaching a class on their own to the public. My trainees graduate with full understanding of  the broad scope of yoga, and they have a wealth of information at their disposal to draw upon. I encourage them to not regurgitate the information and try to be a mini-me, but to find their unique voice as teachers. Mostly, by exploring all yoga, we find the core principals that are in all styles, and that boils down to what I call “big yoga” or the yoga that goes beyond the mat. It’s the life principals that make yoga more than a physical practice, and learning how to teach big yoga in just a one hour mat class is the challange I put to my yoga teachers.  

 
Life seems to show more promise and adventure every month now, and my work is a huge part of why I get up, eager to face the day each and every day.
I’m lucky.

And wait till I tell you what I’m up to next at my business – hot stuff……. but that must wait for another post. 
 

      Anyone 

  I have been a writer all my life. I kept journals and wrote stories as a child. When I lived in New York I attended all kinds of writing workshops and writer’s groups. I wrote poems, stories, lyrics (which I dared sing in clubs) and tried my hand at a historical novel, although I only wrote about 150 pages. I still have it. The writing isn’t bad, but the storyline is silly. I think writing, like wine, gets better with maturity. Life experience and the expression of thought needs time to ferment to develop deeper flavor.

When my children were first born, my writing faded to the quiet corners of my mind. I was swamped with work and I had no choice but to devote all my attention to building a new business to support the family. Our dreams often get buried under the demands of life during those thirty-forty years.

There are two powerful books that address how this comes to be. One is The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer – a short prose about living an authentic and meaningful life. The poem promotes a life of artistic expression and joy but also says:

“It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.”

That pretty much explains how dreams slide when life gets demanding. When I left New York, my children and later my spouse and his dreams, just seemed more important than my own artistic ambition. I always felt my time to pursue the things I loved would come later… My first priority was taking care of the people I loved.  

I still wrote in the quiet moments. Even while running Flex, I wrote a novel (and one half of two other books). I wrote letters – partly to express myself but mostly because I lived a very alienated life, at least emotionally. I was deeply lonely and craved connection – physical and emotional. I filled that emptiness by putting words on paper. Perhaps I needed an audience.  I believe I would have responded to anyone who cared to hear my voice and act interested in what I thought and believed about life. Letter writing evolved into blogging. Safer. Less intimate. But still, a craving for someone to listen. But mostly, blogging helped me wade through my inner life and better understand the connections (or lack thereof) in my world.  It wasn’t about an reaching an audience at all – it was about writing.  Only in retrospect do I see how desperately my art craved a bit of light and space.

There is another very powerful book about art (actually it was written by a writer and the examples within are primarily about writing) called The Artist’s Way. This book has a chapter about how important it is not to quit your day job in some selfish ideal that art requires your full attention. This author explains that a serious artist can not and should not separate him or herself from society to be “an artist”. A powerful artist has to engage in life, get his or her hands dirty and be out there with people and the challenges of life to tap into that human element that gives something of value to share. This truly resonates with me. I moved to the mountains with a romantic notion that I needed nature and solitude and time without having to make a living to apply myself to writing in a serious way. Like Walden Pond. I felt that full focus was the path to seriously attend to my art, so I enrolled in school and earned my MFA, ready to give my writing the shot it deserved. But I found myself less productive and less inspired during that time when I had unlimited time and space to create. I produced better art when engaged in the meaty process of living and there was less time to feed my artistic angst and a beautiful walk in the woods or time messing around my barn couldn’t lure me into procrastination. It is just too easy to push art aside when there was always tomorrow to make a masterpiece. Too much time can easily lull you into wasting the most precious commodity we have.
 
Life and all it’s complexity is a muse. A busy life holds a microscope up to to the details about people, society, your inner world – all the things that exemplify the human condition and make art have more substance.  Being a serious artist does not mean you stop being a mom or a friend, or an attentive lover, or a productive member of society, and art certainly doesn’t require solitude or attention 24/7. You have to have something to say as the purpose for creation, because that is what art is all about. If you only surround yourself with is art and solitude, you only have art and self to talk about rather than deeper reflections of the world at large. Kind of a catch-22. Art Myopia.

If you study the greatest artists of all time, they all had a day job. Heck, Thoreau worked in a pencil factory – his Walden Pond experiment was not indicative of his lifestyle and he did not live free of social expectation despite his theoretical essays about man’s need to do just that to live a soulful existence. His time on Walden Pond was only one small portion of a life that included hard work, compromise and many practical choices too. Struggling to find balance between supporting oneself and handling life responsibilities while continuing to passionately dive into some form of artistic expression  has been the challenge and the reality of just about every great artist in history.

In yogic thought, there is a theory that faith and practice untested is worthless. It is easy to live true to your yoga principals in a monastery or living in a cabin in the woods. But try living with compassion and faith – try being good to others and to live your beliefs when you struggle with the frustrations of living in the bustle of a busy, stressed population. Practice your yoga (and I don’t mean the physical) when it requires strength everyday to not slip and react poorly to the triggers that are busy life’s minefield. Be a good yogi when you are paying bills, forced to get up everyday and go make money in a field you don’t love, and while meeting responsibilities or dealing with jerks in line at the bank. This is how you develop true spiritual muscle based on practical application rather than theoretical talk.
I think art is like that too. Want to prove you are a true artist? See if you can create something of value after doing the dishes and the laundry and paying the electric bill.  

I think about these mentioned favored  books and the concepts within often when I miss the mountains, crave free time and the promise my life held a few years ago. We grow from adversity. And for that, I can sincerely thank my ex. He may have taken a great deal from me, but his folly gave me a great deal at the same time. Thus is the beautiful balance of life when you recognize growth is painful and yet poignantly sweet.  I retired a few years ago with enough money to live a comfortable, financially stress free existence for the rest of my days. I was up for our huge life reinvention because it meant I could have total freedom to care for my family and pursue my writing without worry or hardship. That was my dream come true – not having money to spend extravagantly, but having money to support a simple life of quiet contemplation. The possibilities for contentment and happiness was indescribable…. but only two years into our life reinvention, my spouse not only had spent every cent we had on excessive grandiose projects, but he had driven us a million dollars into debt. So much for bliss and the luxury of pursuing your art in a life of simplicity as we planned.

I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say life fell apart financially, and then we fell apart emotionally, and I pretty much wanted to crawl under the covers and never come out. It wasn’t just the disappointment over losing my life as it was, but I mourned the life I felt entitled to because I had earned time it from years of sacrifice and patience – years of putting the task of making money and taking care of everyone ahead of my own personal dreams. I was also hurt that my dreams had been squandered. They simply were not considered worthy of protecting by a life partner of 20 years who chose to fulfill his own desires first, foremost and at the expense of the entire families security and protection. Accepting the painful reality of how imbalanced and one-sided our love was had to be the worst of it .
 
But as the prose says,  I knew what had to be done…. I made the hard choice to change my life, leave things I loved behind, and push my personal dreams aside (again) to leave the mountains and start over with another business in Flor
ida, the one place I knew my vision could thrive enough to meet the future demands of the family. It was a dark time, but on days when I couldn’t bear my situation or I was deeply sad over my losses, I just remembered The Invitation and I’d say the words to myself like a mantra…. Even if I am filed with grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, I need to do what needs to be done to feed the children.”
I must have read the Invitation to my yoga students a hundred times…  needing reinforcement to get through those times.

My ex chose to handle the financial crisis differently, deciding it was his turn to be happy and pursue his art despite the fact that our distressed circumstances were a result of this very attitude of self indulgence and short term consideration. For a while he worked from home sporadically, then as he became less productive,  he gave that up too. This led to his being financial insolvent and he faced bankruptcy, applied for food stamps and he stopped supporting our children, first financially then emotionally. His justification for the withdraw is that he is an artist. He even wrote the kids a letter explaining that he didn’t believe in society’s definition that being a good father meant a man had to support his kids- that the best way he could be a good father was to live true to his art. He claims they will understand and respect his turning away from social expectation when they are older and they will appreciate how he chose to celebrate his talent and follow his personal calling instead of laboring to attend to others (their) needs. He also made it clear he doesn’t plan to work in a traditional job ever again, and he must mean it, because he was using a hip replacement to attempt to get on disability permanently so he can make art for the rest of his days while living on social services. 

He had the same settlement as I – enough money to begin a fresh life unencumbered with baggage from the past. I spent my money paying off every debt, opening a business and planning for the long term. He spent his on another indulgent house remodeling project, then bankrupted his debt, avoiding responsibility and thrusting himself into a state of financial crisis again. He says he no longer believes in making money because he is “new age”. Funny, my entire world is filled with yoga teachers, Reiki healers,  new-age  artists and bohemium types and not a one of them defines “new-age” as acting in a financially irresponsible manner. On the contrary, my new age friends are more conscientious and moral, and socially responsible, not taking advantage of the system, than anyone I know.

His self definition as a  struggling, new age artist feels romantic, I suppose. He is a talented and creative man, and I agree he is an artist and should be creating. But I don’t see him producing anything of greater merit than what he produced in the past when he had more resources and deadlines to meet etc…..  In fact, I believe his art was more diverse and more filled with passion and unique expression before we moved and made a big tado over our celebrated role as artists. Ever since he was 23 I’ve watched him use one health issue after another as an excuse to cop out of doing things he doesn’t want to do –  the invalid trump card is his favored escape. And that doesn’t serve him or his art either – at least not beyond the moment.   

His life choices don’t affect me in such a personal way anymore, and for that I am grateful. But it does continue to make me contemplate art and excuses and the yoga concept of satya, which means truthfulness (being truthful to others, but mostly to yourself and recognizing how you make internal excuses rather than see with clarity what you do and how it affects others.)   

It took a few days for me to wrap my brain around his letter to the kids. My first reaction was anger – his choice to pursue his art robs me of  opportunity to pursue my own since I am wrestling with a double financial burden as result of his not doing his part. (another yoga concept called asteya or non-stealing, which goes beyond that idea that you don’t steal material things. You also don’t steal the more primal rights of others – meaning their energy, resources, or their right to express themselves or live without burdens you create that are yours alone to carry.)   I guess I was also perturbed by the example he set for our children because I so desperately want them to grow up with integrity as responsible adults.  But after a day or two of feeling anger, I just felt sad. His choices are his to make, and I no longer have to suffer the results of his actions beyond the annoyance of a few custody issues he drags out that make simple matters more costly and emotionally difficult than necessary.  I guess I just feel art demands a generosity of spirit and lots of self discipline, and to me his choices reveal a lack of both. Because of that, I feel he will not get what he longs for and that is sad – for him, for our kids, and for art in general – because the world of art needs and deserves talented individuals like him.  
 
People make choices according to what they feel is most important. Art and the freedom to follow one’s heart is important – I agree. For me, taking care of my children is following my heart.  I am not a martyr.  I’m just doing what instinct tells me a parent should do. Anyway, life is all about choices and I strongly believe that my art will be better because of the choices I’m making. I certainly know my life will be. That is what keeps me going.

Now that speech makes me sound theoretically respectable, but the reality is, life isn’t easy and sometimes that pisses me off and I behave badly because of it. Being tired and frustrated and feeling taken advantage of can make toads come out of one’s mouth. I try to get along with my ex, but some days I just can’t help but react to his abuse of my time, effort and willingness to take up his slack because I should be free of that dynamic. Let his next wife handle the burden of being married to someone who wants to be taken care of constantly.   I work 7 days a week currently, and I have no choice but to make personal sacrifices that exhaust me mentally as well as physically as I channel every cent I have into helping my kids rather than take a small vacation to refresh my soul or pay off a pending bill to give myself less stress. The primary focus of my life lately has been keeping my son in college and providing opportunity and security to my daughter and oh how I spin my wheels work-wise to do just that. All work and no play makes Ginny a dull girl.  And when my son tells me Dad sleeps in every day and makes quiet dinners at home every night and watches los of Dr. Who, and my ex follows that with a letter saying he plans to get a job in three years (when my daughter is conveniently 18 and no longer requires support) just sets me off. Hate when that happens. I meditate, come back into balance and swear I won’t let his disfunction bother me. But it does.

Some days I’m so overwhelmed with the financial burden that I just want to quit, find some well established guy to take care of me, and give up the struggle for independence and my personal ideals all together. (Sorry David… just a honest admittance of the occasional weak thought. This is in no way a comment on your present situation, nor is there any threat that I would ever make choices influenced by my upon wanting life to be easier…)  The temporary thought passes and I respond by sitting my butt down at the computer to do some marketing to crank up my earning potential. I’m working on a business plan today as I consider expanding my business. Whatever it takes to feed the children, ya know.

At the end of the day when the work is done, I often sit on my porch with glass of wine and contemplate how different my life could have been had I been able to pursue my dreams unencumbered by all this responsibility. And in these quiet moments I have to remind myself that I can make art anywhere – it is simply a matter of priorities and commitment. And I remind myself that this time of hardship is really a gift, because I am in the thick of life, testing my resolve and commitment everyday…. learning and growing, whether I like it or not. If the struggles of life fuels art, I have a tank overflowing with fuel. And there is a lovely bi-product of being challenged. You get to see what you are made of. And my kids see it too.

I am very, very proud of how much I’ve accomplished in two years – going from total life annulation to a new life that holds promise for success on so many levels. I’m excited with the direction my business is going – it may end up bigger and more diverse than my last business – or so it appears at the rate things are going. I feel passionate about my work. I love what I do and I serve others in a meaningful way. I am learning new things, growing in directions I never would have gone had life been easier. My world is filled with beautiful, heartfelt people now and I feel connected on deeper levels to my students, my daughter, my partner and my staff. I’ve been introduced to new concepts, Eastern thought and practice constantly challenges my Western mind.  I’m proud of the fact that I’m taking care of my kids too, and showing them what it is to be responsible, strong and resourceful. When I focus on how my kids are doing and realize that every month I’m in a position to do more for them, I can sleep at night  – trust me, for two years I spent every night  awake with feelings of despair and worry over them. From the moment my children took their first breath I wanted to be an accountable parent. I’m doing that. In the end, this is what makes me feel good about my world, even if some days I want to just run away from the endless struggles. 

Anyway, how does all this relate to the subject of writing  and art?
In the midst of the crisis of life recovery, I again had to put my writing aside. Seemed more painful this time because I came so close to having my coveted art infused life and I went through all the work of earning an MFA in support of that dream. But every once in awhile, that yearning to apply myself to “the dream” rears its head anyway.  On those days, I spend a few hours writing, or I’ll send out letters to agents looking for representation for the book I wrote two years ago, My Million Dollar Donkey just to remind myself that life can and should be about more than constant work and taking care of everyone else.  

A year ago, I went to a writing convention and had an appointment with an agent. She talked to me for over an hour – the appointment was only supposed to be 15 minutes, but she was extremely interested in my story so we talked a long after others had closed up shop. She asked me to cut the book from 120K words to 90K words explaining that the shorter length was best for a memoir from a first time author for marketing and publication reasons. I was in the process of that huge rewrite project when I got a call that my daughter was in the hospital. She had emotional problems that were manifesting in serious self-harming issues I won’t go into here. I stopped bloggin because I never wanted to rant about the drama of my divorce or my fight to gain custody of my daughter, so I wont’ start now.  I’ll just say that at the time, I worried all the time about her – and when she got sick and all kinds of information tumbled forth that had been withheld from me, it became clear that all the concerns and fears that had tortured me for two years proved true. I was devastated. Angry. Filled with regret and despair that I didn’t fight harder or smarter or do whatever it took to protect her from a situation I instinctually knew was wrong for her.  

With only a day’s notice, she came to live with me. I was relieved to finally have the opportunity to care for her, but now, every resource I had – my time, money, emotional fortitude, etc.. had to be applied to helping her recover. She is damn more important to me than any book I might write or want to sell, so I took care of her rather than finish the rewrite or keep in contact with that agent, (and for the record, there is not a day goes by that I am sorry I had to do that.). After about 6 months, she seemed less fragile and I started rewriting and cutting the book when I had a free morning or late at night when she was sleeping. Eventually, the revised version was finished, but I never did send it to the agent. If you wait a year after a meeting, that opportunistic moment has passed. 

Anyway,  my daughter is doing exceptionally well. She is happy and balanced and full of spirit. Filled with a healthy curiosity about life, she is a bundle of energy, smiles and ambition, and I no longer have to worry about her moods or what she might do because of them. At last I don’t have to make her the highest priority every hour of every day. We are just a normal mom and daughter now, with warmth, laughter, fights and sighs a part of everyday. As life balances out,  I’ve begun to sense the pull to attend to my writing again. So, one day, a month or so ago, I sent a few letters out to new agents.  I wanted to reactivate that small smidgen of hope for my dreams to come alive again.  And low and behold, a month later, I got a response from a very well respected agent – the president of an agency in New York, who I never even solicited. She came across my proposal and sample chapters because a colleague passed them on to her thinking my book was right up her alley. She told me she very much enjoyed what she read so far- and wanted to see more. I quickly looked her up wondering if she was legit, discovering she is extremely accomplished  and respected and she  favors books about personal growth, women’s journeys, organic living, and life philosophy. Um… no wonder a colleague passed my work on to her – her  description of the material she is looking to represent defines my book.
 
I sent her the full manuscript with my marketing platform. This is the first time a professional agent has asked for the manuscript when it was really ready. The book has been reworked, shortened, tightened up, and also diligently line edited by David, who has carefully gone over every sentence of my book 5 times…. he is my biggest supporter and remarkably talented as an editor. His support and encouragement will be a huge factor in my success if I ever have any, because he doesn’t just give lip service to supporting my dreams. Rather, he shows he truly wants me to achieve my heart’s desire, proving it by not only  reading my work, but doing so objectively to give me important feedback – a supportive partner is the most valuable critique partner a writer can  have. 
 
Anyway, I now anxiously await a response. Funny, when you feel hope is lost, something small can happen and you instantly perk up. You even wonder if all the turns and obstacles life throws your way wasn’t a test of your fortitude and determination to stick to your guns. Dues paid in some kind of artistic karma test. The long, hard road will certainly make success sweeter when it comes. She may or may not want to represent me. No matter what happens, I feel my artist spirit finally reigniting after that long sabbatical.

Deep down, I have faith that my time for writing is coming. If my book does not get picked up by this agent, then another will find it. Whoever publishes it will not be disappointed. I can sell this book. People ask me for it all the time – writing students, yoga students, and others. My choice to return to the world of the living to open a business and be a public figure again, my choice to work on this book rather than another, etc.. etc… is all a part of a bigger picture. Everything happening to me feels connected….. and it all feels a part of a bigger journey yet to come.
 
The other day I ran the statistics. This blog gets an average of 390 readers a day. Not bad considering I’ve only recently returned to posting entries. Now that I’ve begun writing again, I feel ready to start a new book about my yoga journey, a memoir about the next chapter of life and the lessons learned as I explore Eastern philosophy and new age concepts coming to the table as a semi-skeptic. There is a great deal of humor, poignancy and adventure in my yoga, reiki, meditation, auyerveda adventure. I should be capturing the details as I go – for me, my kids, others, prosperity. If life has taught me one thing, it is that I am a teacher. I teach many subjects to many audiences in many ways. Teaching is my dharma….. and writing is teaching in a significant way.
 
Somehow I think everything in my life fits together like the quiet before the storm. The good news is, the storm isn’t heavy winds to worry about or brace for. When my writing finally gets it’s turn at bat, it will be more like singing in the rain, dancing and enjoying the refreshing downpour after a really long draught.
I will do what needs to be done to feed the children…. meanwhile, I will use my weariness and bruised bones to create art that feeds something within…..  and processing those exp
eriences will produce art that will someday feed others as well…. It’s all a part of a bigger whole.