Tis the Season in Everyday Ramblings

This is what it looks like outside right now. I took this on my birding class this time last year. Somehow it seems appropriate with the news about sequencing the genome for various classes of birds. As I have mentioned before the cormorants look almost prehistoric and it turns out they just might be! Or at least some small part of them is.

Lately we have had roosting crows moving into the neighborhood at dusk, hundreds and hundreds of them. Last night with the freak wind storm with these massive gusts right as the light was fading and the huge birds were cawing and swirling and trying to get a purchase on trees half bent over it was all very atmospheric and creepy.

Wish me luck in renting a room at my church to teach a public yoga class starting in January. I have people who want to take it and I have had plenty of time to contemplate this and one of the things I would like to do in 2015 is teach a little more and travel to class a little less.

A couple of my previous private students want to work with me some more and my current private student also wants to work with me more so this is a great opportunity to continue to work with folks that already know they benefit from the practices and will share that with other students. Of course I am going to say they will all benefit but it means more when it comes from another student.

Eventually I will find a room. I am also going to teach on a donation basis instead of a per class basis. My experience with this in my work class was that after a year folks were grateful and became quite generous. And I can’t stand the idea of people not coming because they are living on a fixed income and feel they can’t afford it.

Because I believe pretty much every body can benefit from some form of these practices.

I listened to this TED Talk Hour on people and the biology of how we relate to money the other night and there are studies now that show that people who have less are more generous and more compassionate than those that have more. That is why panhandling at the bus station instead of the train station (which are right next to each other) is the better bet if you are starving.

My volunteer coordinator had me stop by and chat with a young mom last week who has a 17-month-old son she can’t leave right now and is pregnant again. I taught her the Bees Breath humming breathing technique that expands the exhale naturally and is very relaxing. She told me this week that it helped with her nausea!

Gosh, hearing that made me feel useful. As you can imagine this volunteer teaching at the hospital gig is often, umm, not easy.

Diego just figured out how to turn the radio on in the kitchen all by himself. :)

They had some volunteer elves in to decorate the unit for Christmas and wow it is over the top. And all commercialized characters and stuff. I found out who Olaf the Frozen snowman is. I admit I had to ask.

This week I was in the playroom and a volunteer had this huge movie screen down that covered one whole wall and he was playing this enchanted game that had Mickey Mouse doing something fun with some sort of fancy remote with a little boy patient. Another dad and little boy patient were in there watching.

They have to bring in extra volunteers to take and catalog all the gifts for these kids. It is all about stuff.

I am contemplating all manner of this sort of thing today while I work my way through the day and get ready to teach tonight. The cats are trusting me just a little bit more each day. Right now I am in one room and they are in another. Progress.

Last updated December 12, 2014