Over Labor Day weekend I went to the Shambala Mountain Center in Colorado. I was actually looking at yoga retreats when the retreat title "Running with the Mind of Meditation" caught my eye. I had just started running again the month before. After 10 months of intensive yoga teacher training where all of my spare time was spent doing yoga, thinking about yoga and studying yoga, I was happy to add a different but familiar practice to my life.  Plus I still got to do yoga because the retreat…

You could say that my teacher training experience was my "Eat Pray Love" journey.  I didn't have the means to take off for a year, and since I am the main parent to my son, I need to be here for him.  As expensive as a teacher training is, I didn't have to miss much work and I could do it over a period of 10 months.  There was a payment plan, and it all felt doable. 

When I decided to enroll, it was after my relationship with my son's father finally ended.  It had always been…

I was in my second 5K of the summer, and I decided to go for speed.  My first 5K this summer was about making it through without stopping.  I didn't manage to do that because someone in need of encouragement asked me to stop and walk a couple of times, and somehow it was no problem for me to let go of my original goal in order to help another.  And yet when I found myself trying to improve my time, I got easily carried away with my goal even though it wasn't what I was quite prepared to do. …

On my last day of yoga school I did my first handstand where someone wasn't holding my feet and I didn't freak out.  I actually did another one shortly after the first because I wanted proof of the first one. Somehow the panic was all gone, as though I'd used up all my fear and there wasn't any left, and I knew I was strong enough. Someone asked me not long ago what I was afraid of, if it was being upside down that I didn't like. I know that's not it because I enjoy headstand. (I actually…