Here and There

Far Away

I am searching for you

Waiting, Restless

Looking here and there, not knowing

Unaware

I have forgotten

Still searching

For you, For Love

Random images, confusion

Flash like scenes from a dream

Far Away

You are watching

Waiting, Restless

I sit, Motionless

I feel you ripple through me

The way waves caress each piece of sand on the shore

Each cell in my body is bathed by your light, your beauty

Alive

Full of love, Ecstasy

I remember

I shutter, quake

Awake

Eyes Open, I sleep

Searching

Still Searching

Far Away, and Knowing

Here Now

The World doesn’t Happen to US..It Happens Because of us..Just Imagine!!

Wherever you go, you carry your own imagination.  Even if you go to heaven, you won’t be able to see it as heaven if there is a hell in your heart.  If you have a heaven in your heart, you would even enjoy hell.  Yes it’s true. Because you would see heaven there. It is all up to you.

            -Swami Satchidananda

This was the passage that I read today at breakfast as I set my intention for the day.  I recently got back from a Prana Flow training in LA.  Back in Fort Wayne, Indiana where everything is so spread out,  missing my daily walks, and no car necessary approach to life, I hesitantly loaded my girls into the car to take them to daycare.  As I turned the key, nothing happened.  I was honestly grateful, because now we were forced to walk to daycare which is only a mile away.

It’s just that, well, we sort of live in the ghetto, and so I usually start my car up to drive them a mile away, and then if I want to go for a walk, drive another half mile to  walk around the beautiful park and golf course.  Today I was forced to take the less sexy or scenic walk. I realized that I was doing something that was not only good for my body, my kids, and the environment, but I couldn’t help but feel down and stressed.  Much less peaceful and present than when I walk through the beautiful park, that I usually drive to, even though it is only a mile away from my home.  I was feeling discouraged about where we live and how the people around us live, thinking that we need to move and judging everyone around me.  My kids were thrilled about the walk, and I was thankful that it wouldn’t take long, since I have a daycare provider so close.  As we walked, and I judged, my 5 year old pointed to a home that we passed, you know the neighbor that has several porcelain figures, planters, and a bathtub alter with mother Mary, set up in the yard ..look mom…cool!! They have so much cool Halloween stuff ready, then she pointed down to a shiny 3 musketeers wrapper in another neighbors yard(my kids don’t really know what candy bar wrappers look like)”Look at that beautiful flower mom!”  I reflected on the passage that I began my day with.  Wherever you go, carry your own imagination.

It is easy to be inspired, feel sexy, and look younger, when we get out of our everyday lives and habitual ways of living. Like when we go on a vacation, go on a yoga retreat, or wake up on a beach or a mountain top.   But how do we do this in our every day lives?  How do we stop grasping for something other than where we are right now, and live and love every moment.  We use our imagination.  I started using mine, and began “picking flowers” on the way home.  Not only was I cutting down on toxins in the environment today by not being able to turn on my car, I was helping to make my neighborhood a more beautiful place.  Instead of obsessing about the new sexy Chevy Volt that I want, to show what a great yogi I am, I embrace being able to use my legs and hands for serving those around me. To serve those that may not have the time, health, or inspiration to clean up their own yard.  As for the home with the Halloween décor all over the yard, well..at least it makes my daughter excited, and I have an alter at home too, we are not so different.  It doesn’t matter weather we are laying on a beach in LA or walking through the ghetto on a drizzly day.  If you are joyful you experience joy, wherever you are.  What matters is how we walk this walk, and if we are reaching out to inspire and uplift others along the way. Be the one to capture something new today, to see something different than you usually do, and to carry your imagination with you.  Change the, sometimes mundane, walk through life, into a path of beauty and wonderment.  It’s all up to you.

Be Joy! Wherever you are!!

How Yoga Made Me a Terrible Runner

As I climb on the treadmill today the familiar-faced gentlemen beside me says, ”Hi Dani! You’re still running?” Looking surprised to see my yoga bum at the YMCA. Well I am standing on a treadmill with my worn out sneakers, so he is obviously referring to something else…

I think to myself, what has happened to me! I used to be a “Runner”. Has yoga affected my ability to run? Yes, and it has affected my ability to flee. For most of my life, my water-like persona has been to run from one endeavor to the next. Shape shifting into what “I thought” everyone else wanted from me. It is much easier to shy away from our selves than to face the truth. We are all running from something at sometime or another on this path, and quite frankly running is exhausting, and can never satisfy the soul. In the words of Carbon Leaf, “it takes the courage of a lamb to run, the fierceness of a storm to love.” I used to think that to love was to be weak…weak in the knees, weak-willed, week stomached with the floating butterflies. I would like to thank Walt Disney for the role model of the female princess, so soft and feminine that a bird will land on her finger as she sings in her angle like voice. I still get so excited when the little squirrel that visits my front porch for the few walnuts I leave, comes to visit me, just so I can imagine I have that certain grace, and nurturing, goddess energy, that animals flock to for comfort and companionship. And thank you even more for the thought that I am the type that falls all over herself, and into the arms of the man, whom without, I would be incomplete.
Many times we end up searching outside of ourselves for everyone and everything to give our power to. It takes incredible strength to own our power, be fully ourselves, and a constant awareness that we are not falling back into those habitual thought patterns that our society, and Walt, have left impressed into our subconscious. Through my yoga practice I have found my core beliefs and strength, and it is earth shaking to finally realize this that is inherently ours.
If there are two things I want my daughters to learn from my parenting, or anyone else in life, it is that they are powerful and loved beyond what they could ever imagine.
Rumi sends a much more positive message to our soul that I’ve witnessed through the practice of yoga…”The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”

It takes courage to be a vessel for this type of love.
If we stop running… what happens when we stay? When we stay in a difficult yoga pose…the sensations change and transform. But only if you are honest and aware of what you are feeling. In order to stay you have to be fully in touch with your emotions, even if they are socially unacceptable or unpopular. This is the most difficult part when you are a recovering people pleaser like myself. Really feel what you are feeling. How often do we do this? We are usually too busy or the timing is not right to acknowledge what we feel, or we let our judging mind determine whether it is a good or bad to feel this way. Just stop, and really feel what you are feeling today. It may not be popular, and it will most likely be uncomfortable, but it is the truth. To try to reason with our emotions is the biggest way to flee from our lives, as you take a back seat to your mind and emotions playing a game of tug of war. This can become a continuous inner struggle unless we let go of the rope, feel what we are feeling, and then move on purpose with purpose.
“Reason is like an officer when the king appears. The officer then loses his power and hides himself. Reason is the shadow cast by God; Go is the sun.”-rumi
When Walt thaws out, I would like to see him write a story about the Princess that saves herself…

The man on the other treadmill noticed the confusion in my face waiting patiently as I reply “no, I am not still running” turn on my treadmill, put my earbuds in place, and exhaust myself for the next 3 miles.