Backward bending

After getting creamed by a car in February of 2007, my head was not the same; my life was not the same. Headaches filled my days, the computer I worked at seemed offensive to me because the more I stared at it the worse my brain felt. I gave up hockey and skiing for the season once I realized I needed to NOT fall on my head again. I was a bit down and out but always realized it could have been so much worse. So I kept a good attitude and started going to yoga again. Bikram's 90 minute meditation brought me back into my body, it made me feel strong when I was feeling weak. I practiced a few times a week, whenever I felt like I could fit it in.
My friends Bel and Emily opened up a Bikram's Yoga studio in Carbondale in July. It is four blocks from my house. I started going more regularly. Soon after I went to the new studio I had an epiphany that I wanted to go to the teacher training so I could teach yoga, so I could get out of my office and move my body more and sit around less. And I wanted to do something where I had a little more control over my schedule and could take more than two weeks vacation a year. I quit my job at the local newspaper, a difficult move for me but something I don't regret. I called my credit card company and in five minutes had a $10,000 credit card limit and a lower interest rate. I maxed out the credit card and signed up for the training the day before I left for a three week river trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in August. I went to California to see family, then I came back to Colorado in time to pack my bags and ship myself to Hawaii for nine weeks. Now I've been here for two weeks and its changed all 30 years of my life in a very positive way. Seven more weeks to go. My husband is a saint and a very knowing man. The absence, on the river and here in Hawaii, has made that so abundantly clear. The night before I left I had some dinner with friends and they looked at me and said "You're going to be so much different when you get back." I thought, "yes, I'll be able to bend backwards." But really, the physical transformation is nothing compared to how deep I'm bending my mind.

Having doesn't mean anything...

If you don't know how to use it.
Blessed enough to grow up in America, the richest country in the world. We have everything: air conditioning, heat, food, water, posture pedic mattresses and nose hair clippers, back scratchers, maids, nannies, public restrooms with free toilet paper; opportunities to live fully and well. But we don't know how to use it. People obsess about their hair and nails and weight and skin and boobs, and time and money and money and money. Yet, we constantly spend more than we have, usually buying meaningless crap we justify that we need somehow becasue we've been brainwashed by advertising. And we waste so much precious time! If only we all knew what it is like to lose a child or a loved one or to be terminally ill, to really start living each day, each moment, without actually having to go through it. We might actually take advantage of what we have. The present.

Breathing in I calm my body, breathing out I smile
dwelling in the present moment.
I know this is a wonderful moment.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Ripple...

Step by step, moving towards a mountain top, I stop. Bending down at a clear, cool pool, breaking the reflection of the clouds, I dip my hand and take a drink. A tiny drop falls from my fingertips; it ripples. I dive in and make a giant splash, it ripples and ripples; the wind rises and ripples the surface of the water. I scream, with joy, with pain; the echo ripples through the mountain tops. I feel the presence of a friend, long gone. It ripples through my blood like an electrical current and I remember what I am supposed to do. I keep walking, step by step.