Seeds of Hope in Everyday Ramblings

It is raining now but before it started this was my bright colorful world just a few blocks away here in the neighborhood.

Thanks for your wishes for energy as I moved into my new teaching schedule. I needed them! Even though I have taught in this room at work before it had been almost 3 years and my relationship with some of the people I work with is fraught so I was nervous.

When I am nervous I eat. On Monday morning I think I had eaten all my Weight Watchers points for the entire day by 10AM. Oh well. It provides a temporary comfort and I had had a good food weekend with lots of healthy vegetables.

There are chairs in the conference room I teach in and I don’t have chairs in the studio so I thought too cool I will use the chairs as props and support in creative ways. The first person in the room is a complete stranger, a beautiful gazelle like woman (in her early 40’s maybe) and she sees the chairs and goes…”Oh no! Is this chair yoga???”

Eeek. I assure her that it is “real yoga” and we were just starting out in the chairs and that a lot depended on who else showed up. The next person in was a manager who I know is in good shape because she has been to my classes before and likes things like arm balances.

I ended up with 5 people, all in remarkably good shape. So I made the class progressively more challenging. It was focused on the connective tissue in the side part of the leg called the IT Band.

It was fun! I loved it. Loved loved loved it. I got this huge burst of energy from the group. Little do they know how lucky they are in the general scheme of things to have this range of motion. Inside I was like a kid in a candy store…they can do this, oh and they can do that and oh what fun we shall have exploring what else we can do…

And the feedback I got was good. They liked the guided body awareness meditation with a focus on gratitude I did at the end too.

Then a few hours later I showed up at the studio for the launch of the Fall Session through the church. I had 14 people! One who showed up with a trek pole and another with this huge walking staff. Both are people with pretty serious balance issues. And I did manage to scrounge up chairs for the two of them. Word is getting around the church that my class is good for bodies with limitations.

I am happy about this in the sense that I know I can provide information and direction in how to use these yogic tools to feel better.

But it is a challenge to teach into a class with such a wide range of limitations. There isn’t that exhilaration that I got in the work class, it is much more subtle and discreet. But I will tell you this is a great group of people and as I told the gentleman with the staff, even if you can’t move much you are still in a room interacting with a warm and welcoming group of like minded people.

Last night we had an unexpected drenching rainsquall and one of my students showed up soaking wet. I am taking a fluffy towel to keep at the studio from now on.

Climate change don’t you know.

I am heartsick about the fires in Northern California. Calistoga is one of my favorite places on earth and they evacuated the whole town yesterday. I spent my 50th birthday there. Ughh.

Yesterday we were trying to figure out how to call the island of Aruba for a work reason and I found this description of the islands most affected by the hurricanes so far this season. Aruba was not one of them.

But the two islands of my heart were.

I did hear this wonderful news story over the weekend about a planeload of electrical workers and other skilled folks sent down by their union (mostly from New York) to help out Puerto Rico. A band played a heavy Latin beat as these incredible volunteers deplaned and everybody cheered to have practical useful willing help on the tarmac.

Don’t even get me started on the Harvey Weinstein story… the news is so overwhelming but buried deep within each story are the seeds, very small but there…of hope.

Last updated October 12, 2017