New yoga mat

A couple of months ago I got a new yoga mat.  I got a Manduka Pro-lite, and I tell you it's love.  I couldn't decide which Manduka to get, so I bought an EKO mat and a Pro-lite.  After practicing on both, I've decided to give the EKO to my husband.  Luckily I picked gender neutral colors when devising this plan.

My old mat served me well.  But it had a burn (from ear candling gone awry), cat scratches too numerous to count and sadly, two cat puke stains.  Plus it just didn't offer the same support as the Mandukas I'd tried at Virayoga.

Pic via Gaiam Life

I didn't want to throw it away though!  So I did some research on recycling and reusing yoga mats.  Here's an article that offers 50 ways to reuse your yoga mat.  We ended up using part of my old yoga mat to line the shelves where we leave our shoes upon entering the apartment and the rest as a pad under and around the cat litter.  Very useful!

We still have some scraps left, so maybe I'll try and tackle these yoga mat flip flops next.  Kinda awesome!

Stretch it out!

When I was around 16 weeks pregnant we went in for an ultrasound.  First Arlo was lazy, then he was  swimming around like crazy.  At one point I swear he was doing downward facing dog.  I looked at my husband and asked "Did you see that?  He's already a yogi!!"

Well he's still going strong.  Hands up to the sky, hands to the floor.  When I pull out my yoga mat he bends over and shows me how stretchy his little body still is.  It's beautiful.  He can even do the splits!

18 months

This child makes me feel grateful, thankful, blessed.

Patience

Yesterday I did this wonderful, short yoga sequence by Elena Brower on Yogaglo.  The description of this 10 minute sequence says "A selection of standing poses, a makeshift mudra for patience and a brief meditation that will help all moms find more strength, space and time in the most challenging moments of your day."  First of all, I felt great afterward--spacious, grounded, patient and full of love.  Little did I know how much I would need those feelings just a bit later in the afternoon!

 

My husband is an artist, and I absolutely love that he makes his ink drawings at home rather than in the studio.  I did not love it yesterday though, when he left a bin with at least 4 different bottles of ink (without lids!!) within toddler's reach.  Luckily I had just done that sweet little yoga sequence, so I was brimming with patience and love and managed to find humor in the situation rather than being too terribly upset during the 45+ minutes it took to clean up this pretty little mess.

January

January was a difficult beginning to 2011.  I had a cold/upper respiratory infection that started over the holidays and lasted nearly the whole month.  I rarely get sick, so I spent the first part of the month wondering what was going on and being grouchy about it.  Winter felt like it started early this year in New York.  It was cold and dreary before Thanksgiving!

late January snow storm

Mid-January it finally sank in that being grouchy wasn't making me feel any better, and it was time to take action.  I tried for a good 2 weeks to heal myself naturally and with nutrition and homeopathy.  My struggle ended with antibiotics, which did the trick.  This has been an interesting lesson for me.  It seems that 2011 is going to be the year where I learn to find balance, where I learn to let go, where I learn to really take care of myself, and where I learn my limits.

And now that I'm finally on the mend (still resting more to combat fatigue, but otherwise better!) I'm excited about making use of some wonderful websites that a friend introduced me to.  Yogaglo, Yoga Today and Yogis Anonymous have online yoga classes that you can watch at your convenience, from the comfort of your own home.  They offer some free classes, or you can access their whole library of classes for a fee.  The classes on Yogis Anonymous are available on a donation basis.

Discovering these websites is like a new found freedom!  It's perfect for someone like me, working from home and taking care of a toddler.  I don't have tons of extra time or energy in my day to go to a yoga class.  The beauty of these websites is that I can find a class to fit my mood at any given time, and I don't have to commute to it!  Through these websites I can access classes of different lengths, different styles and with different focuses ranging from boosting my immune system and meditation to hip openers and inversions.  There's something for everyone!

Out with the old, in with the new

We had a lovely holiday season this year.  We celebrated Hanukah at home, then went to visit family (in 2 different states) this last week for Christmas and New Year's Eve.  It was busy but fun.

I have spent a lot of time lately considering our lives, past, present, future...  I decided that I want our baby to know us for the people we are during his life time, not for the people we were before.  Ben and I made a fire on New Year's Eve, drank a couple of glasses of red wine and celebrated the future, our future, our little boy's future.

 

I burned a few old journals in this fire.  It was melancholy and sweet, and kind of a brash decision, but it served me well.  The fire burned hot.  It was hot with the passion of my youth--my heart, my happiness, my mistakes.  I was sad and also relieved to see it go.

Here's to 2011!  This is going to be a good year.

Gratitude

 

Today is my husband's birthday.  (My baby and I made the lovely birthday note for him that you see above.)  Thinking about his birthday, how glad I am that he was born, and how glad I am that we are sharing this life together, makes me think just how lucky I am.  I have so many things to be grateful for.

Remember to breathe

I've been procrastinating, avoiding updating this blog.  I think I didn't want to write again and move the post about my grandpa out of the top space on the page.  I've kind of been stuck the last few weeks.  Traveling, working like crazy, running around after my daring, fearless toddler tornado... whew! 

Flying back to NYC - November

As much as I am thankful for the time I had with my grandpa, I am also sad to have lost him.  And also incredibly sad to have lost another connection to my mom.  I saw so many things about her when I looked at him, understood so many things about her.  And I hate to admit that I've been focusing on the sadness of all of that.  Or perhaps it's more accurate to say I've been ignoring it. 

The other day I found myself hunched over the computer with a headache, and that's when it hit me.  I've been keeping myself busy--too busy--and wound up tight, literally, forgetting to breathe.  I've been taking shallow breaths, using only the top of my lungs.  So I sat down on the floor and practiced three part breathing, using my whole lungs.  Then I did some yoga and moved into camel pose.  My chest actually cracked.  It was a cathartic moment.  I recently read an article called "Beat the Blues with Heart Opening Yoga" by Kate Hanley.  It was a good reminder.  I need to look inward right now instead of allowing the busyness of my life to overwhelm me.  I need to breathe and to keep my heart open.  No more slouchy protective shoulders for this girl! 

So this is my new focus.  Breathe.  Open my heart.  Breathe.  Open my heart.  Breathe...

remembering Grandpa

Love.  Friendship.  Vitality.  Health.  What more could a person ask for from life?  These are the words and the questions in my mind as I sit here meditating on the seeming finality of death.  My Grandpa passed away yesterday.  He was 89 years old.  He had plans to go to Florida this past Monday with his brother to play golf.  Instead we're heading to Iowa on Friday, to wish him a last farewell and prayers for a peaceful journey.

I am conflicted.  I am overwhelmed with sadness for my loss, but extremely grateful that I had as much time as I did, with this person who taught me so much... perhaps most importantly, how to love the people in my life, how to be strong and how to be there for them (with a smile), no matter what twists and turns they encounter along the way.  I guess we learn by example, right?

My Grandpa was a good man; patient, caring and kind.  He was never angry, a trait I (unfortunately) didn't inherit.  He always had a joke, a laugh and a song to sing.

I don't feel like anything I'm saying does justice to the memory I have of him.

When I learned he was gone I called my younger brother and his wife, and then I fell into supta baddha konasana.  It just felt like the right thing to do.  I set up my mat so I could soak up the sunlight coming through the window.  Reclining bound angle pose is incredibly restorative.  I leaned back on a bolster to help open my heart.  

I don't know how to deal with grief, how to handle loss.  Luckily my amazing babe is here with me, forcing me to be present instead of focusing on the past, reminding me that life is good, and that life moves on.  I recently read that grief manifests itself physically, so I'm planning on meeting it head on.  There will be lots of heart opening yoga in my future.  :)

After October

My October Yoga Challenge went well.  I didn't do yoga every day that I wanted to.  I didn't make it out to as many classes as I might have liked.  But all in all I consider it a success.  It was a learning process!

Now it is November, and time to take the things I learned in October and integrate them into my daily life.  I need to remember to set goals, but to have some flexibility when my life is pulling me in another direction.  The important thing is to keep my focus so I can come back to them.  With my baby it really is important to remember to take each day at a time.  There's no telling from one day to the next whether he will be teething, crabby and only napping for 25 minutes, or whether he will be my happy, playful little dude, napping for 2 hours and leaving his mama with plenty of time to finish her work on her job and still have time to work on her body, health and mind.

In October I spent a lot of time thinking about how to live more like a yogi.  I meditated on how to better treat the world and the people around me, and how to live my life with gratitude.  I just started reading Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and plan to read Green Yoga by Georg Feuerstein and Brenda Feuerstein next.  I've also started following some blogs about how to green my life, and I'll write more about that soon.

At the beginning of the month I promised myself a reward if I completed the challenge--a new yoga mat.  So although it didn't go exactly as planned, I consider my October Yoga Challenge a success.  In fact, I think it actually was even better than I could have expected, just in different ways.  So I'm looking for a new mat.  Yeah!!