Surrender: Yoga Teacher Training… 5-20-13

The question is: What, most simply, can you surrender to this week? Maybe program related, maybe not.

This week I had to write a bio and did a list of writing prompts to get me started. “Where can we find you when you’re not working? What’s your favorite way to spend a weekend or a Sunday afternoon?” I was whizzing right along and waxing eloquent on all the previous questions about my work until I stopped cold at this one. I pondered, I tried to recollect what I liked to do before I got this busy. In my kinder moments around this question, I celebrated the fact that I love my work, how it is incredibly woven into the fabric of my life, that a big part of my community is students and other teachers. How beautiful to be so in love with my work!

But after this kinder moment came a slide into despair as I realized that my busy-ness has totally stolen my “free” time for a snuggle up with a good book, getting my hands and feet packed with dirt digging in the garden, cooking up something totally impromptu in my robin’s egg blue kitchen, wind whipping by me on a bike cruise, a quiet pause of me and nature and breath and nothing else to do. And how the moments I cherish the most and seem to have so little time for have everything to do with family: a walk in the park with hubbie, grandbaby’s hand nesting in mine, my son building me some sushi, my daughter and I sharing a rare moment alone on the couch, a phone call ending with “I love you” from my dad.

So what I wish to surrender to this week, this month, this summer, what the heck—forever, is an attentive practice of pausing, of taking each moment for the precious work of art that it is, of getting my priorities back in order. I knew that when I signed on for this teacher training it would demand a shift. I have absolutely adored the weekends and the homework, the deep dive into a home practice that blossomed into a life of its own. Invaluable, precious, just what the doctor ordered. And the pendulum is very ready to swing back toward the middle and I am ready to surrender to this swing.