Ouray Yoga™

Perspective: With the dawning of a new year, we oft reflect on what we haven't accomplished, our unfulfilled dreams or unintended consequences from our decisions. January 1 becomes a benchmark, not a starting line. A benchmark because we arrive at this day with all our baggage, all of our travails, all of our insecurities and doubts, we arrive at this flag-post of our journey from our own circuitous path. By all rights, an imperious day on the calendar, based on man's imperfect calculations. Today hardly reflects celestial significance or religious connotation. But nonetheless, a new day, a new year and a fork in our road. A universally accepted reset. A chance for a right or a wrong? The prefix re- is used to indicate again, and again, and again. We all know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Another intention of the prefix re- is back, as in: to reflect. However, on this arbitrary day of new beginn...

Samhain Meditation {Find a seated or lying meditation}  Feel the earth beneath you. Perhaps the earth is cold against your body, notice how your body’s warmth is absorbed and slowly the chill is no longer noticeable. You have given to the earth your warmth and in turn the earth gives you a place of respite. For Samhain, the time of autumn, it is a time to invite rest. A time to nest against the elements, a time to nurture your roots, a time to feed your basic necessities of life.  At this time of year, the veil between our world and the spirit world is thin, as our hemisphere is discarding the green of summer, as our plants seek shelter from the cold and grow deep into the protection of earth, so too, is our spiritual realm needing to find deeper growth, to rid ourselves of the residue of life past. At this time, leaves turn to autumn glory then dry and crack and eventually become a skeleton of what it once was, finally absorbed into the earth for future nourishment...

Our final countdown began very similar to our beginning with pillow talk. Curled up next to my husband in a bed only partly strange to our existence, but foreign enough, we discussed how we wanted to proceed. Our feet had finally decompressed after a restful night of sleep, previously swollen from four days of walking and tubing through London. We love our friends in London, graciously letting us descend upon their home, at our will. This East London brownstone served as a home base for us, a refuge for wayward travelers, a familiar residence to feel grounded. When we had arrived, four days ago, they were not home, but told us to knock on the neighbors door to gain locked access. We originally meant to arrive around 9pm but the foreign passport line at Stansted took longer than our flight from Italy. It was a complete bollox and one begins to wonder about the merits of Brexit. We arrived at 11pm. They not only helped us in, they bbq'd us some sausages and served up a green salad; s...