Love

Liliana’s Birth Story

“We have a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are STRONG.”     -Laura Stavoe

When you have a second baby, one thing you can’t help doing is comparing your second pregnancy with your first, and your second baby’s birth with the birth of your first. Read More →

Paula & Baby Alex’s Birth Story

I am a mom. It is so wonderful. My gratitude is immeasurable….. This was how I began one of the notes I wrote down during the first week of Alexander’s life. Thinking back on that week, I remember just how struck with gratitude I was. So thankful for this healthy baby boy; for Dave, my love, my rock; for my family; for the amazing experience of pregnancy and birth that I had just gone through. “Birth was and will always be the most commonplace of miracles.” Giving birth was at once the most normal and the most profound experience of my life. Read More →

Beyond the Ice Water

I’ve been fascinated by the phenomenon that is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and thanks to my best friend Casey for nominating me to give my two cents – literally and figuratively.

Ok, so you poured ice water on your head…. Now what? Over the past few weeks of seeing this all over social media I found myself wondering what is going on here and why are so many participating. I’ll admit, I didn’t really know what ALS was. I now know that it is a neurological disease that slowly causes nerve cells to break down and die. It is a painful condition, it weakens muscles, causes them to atrophy. ALS severely, negatively impacts quality of life. What causes ALS is not particularly known, however research has uncovered some information I thought was very interesting. Read More →

Road to Teacher Training 2011

It was three years ago today (3years!) that I submitted an essay to Purple Yoga to be considered for their work/study scholarship for the fall semester of Yoga Teacher Training. I love that I had a a chance to write down my experiences on my yoga journey, at that point I had been practicing for just a year and a half, it’s amazing to see where I was and how far I’ve come. Now I am a teacher, I love teaching yoga, and I think being aware of where I came from really helps me be a better teacher. My hope is to be able to connect with each of my students wherever they are in their practice – helping a beginner build a foundation, just as I had to do. Or encouraging a more experienced practitioner in their challenges and adding new layers and depth to their practice, just as my teachers did for me – especially during teacher training. Just as a personal yoga practice is always evolving, so it is with teaching yoga as well. I’m so glad I found my way to this path, I am so grateful to Purple Yoga and my teachers. Even as I write this they are gearing up for this fall’s Yoga Teacher Training to begin in just one month, and other yogis (perhaps even students of mine!) are preparing for this wonderful experience, and even writing essays of their own, just as I did.

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Ojai Retreat

Grateful for an incredible retreat this past weekend in Ojai with my Purple yogis.  So wonderful to experience a new place, loving community, and an inordinate amount of yoga (haha…just kidding…sort of). I can get a little complacent with my day-to-day routine, I forget what good it does me to step out of the ordinary and into a change of scenery, meet new people, and have an extraordinary weekend. Read More →

Beginner’s Gap

I’m pretty sure if Ira Glass and I knew each other, we’d be good friends.

I love this quote. I first discovered it back when I first started teaching yoga, and even though this is about creative work, it really resonated with me. I really felt my novice status. I knew I wasn’t as good a teacher as my teachers with all their experience and wisdom. But I knew I would get there. I knew I had to put in the work. There were no short cuts, I had to earn my experience and wisdom. I actually like that there are no short cuts in life. Doing the work, the learning is the best part! The time between here and there needs to be experienced. And when you get “there” you can look back at “here” with gratification. Sometimes, the more time between “there” and “here” the more rewarding the experience is. Not to say that I’ve arrived! I’m still learning, still becoming the yoga teacher I want to be. Read More →

Just a lovely quote…

 

When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the “I” whose predicate can be “love” or “fear” or “want,” and whose object can be “someone” or “nothing” and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around “I” like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else.

—Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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