​A year has passed
So much has happened
As the world stood still
Our lives went on
 
 
I have been reflecting a lot on the past year. Before Covid hit the US in 2020, our own lives were turned upside down, mostly in a good way. An opportunity that we had been waiting to come up since Easter 2018 happened! A new job opportunity for my husband finally posted in October 2019. We had been waiting and planning for this for a year and a half. Now the wait was over and things started to move rapidly. But he was going to have to move to Virginia for a few years, and then he would be allowed to do the job from home. Luckily, his best friend since college, who presented the opportunity to him, had a garage apartment that he could move into. Also in October, our youngest son decided that he hated the school he was at and wanted to transfer to SUNY Albany. Our oldest was living with friends in a rental house by his school in the city.  I was going to be living alone for the first time in my life. Luckily we had been planning for this for a while so we had looked at every situation and how I would handle all the things that come up with owning an old house and many pets and how to handle them. We set up security systems and cameras so I would be safe and finished all the other home projects that needed completion.
 
January 2020, which should have held the excitement of the future, came upon us in a flood of grief. The past few months had been filled with vet visits and surgeries for Beau, our only remaining dog, a beautiful Golden Retriever who was my 40th birthday present. The tumors were coming faster than we could schedule surgeries and he was getting more and more uncomfortable. We made the decision to let him go and relieve his pain and suffering. I feel like he knew that this was his chance to have his whole family at his side, before everyone moved away. It was a heart wrenching day that still brings me to tears thinking about it. All four of us were there by his side to say goodbye. A week later, I would move Mark to Virginia, and a week after that, my youngest to Albany. My oldest was a rock for me. He came home for dinner at least once a week and stayed if the weather was bad. My heart was in a million pieces, but I had to pick those pieces up and keep going. This sacrifice was for our future. I had to look upon it as an adventure.
 
We worked out a travel schedule so one of us would travel every other week. Ten days into his training academy, Mark got very sick. Fever and cough, negative for flu. We still suspect that this may have been an early case of Covid even though an antibody test in May said he was negative. I was down in Virginia for Valentine’s Day weekend and the first weekend of March. The world was changing so rapidly at that point. It went from being relatively normal in February, with few precautions in place, but items like hand sanitizer were starting to become scarce, to an Apocalyptic world where I was scared to use the rest stops on my journey home in March.
 
Friday March 13, 2020 the State of New York basically shut down. The school districts closed. The universities closed. And everyone came home! My husband has been working from home ever since. I am probably one of the few people that can really look back at the quarantine as a wonderful time. We were extremely blessed to have our jobs. We didn’t have to worry about paying our bills and we had our family together under one roof. I looked at every day that we were home together as a blessing. We had family dinner EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. For months and months! With my teaching schedule and the boys after school activities, that had been a rare event while they were growing up. I felt like we had the opportunity to make up for lost time and I wanted to celebrate every moment that we had together. We did puzzles and had happy hours. Mark and I took walks almost every day. I took joy in the everyday, routine, normal things. This is why I reflect and remember. I want to continue to find joy in every day and in the normal things, even if the world is still in a grim, sad state, and might not recover for some time.
 

​I created a few videos about stretching on my Instagram page in order to stay in touch with my dance students, who we are separated from right now due to the Covid-19 virus.  I wanted to reach out to my students during this time because I wanted to feel like I was doing something useful.  I am so lucky to be at home with my entire family and none of us have high risk jobs that put us in danger. We have a roof above our head and food on our table. And YES, we have plenty of toilet paper! I am beyond grateful.

I thought this information could be useful for others too, so I am sharing the links to my IGTV.
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The first one is at:  www.instagram.com/p/B-NQ8SlBGWQ/
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​The second one was an add-on to the first and can be found here:
www.instagram.com/p/B-PqNAxhbk0/

​You will notice that 1 of my 4 cats, CJ, is featured prominently in the videos. He likes to be the center of attention, especially when I am busy doing something. He was one of the 5 foster kittens that we took in last Spring. We kept two of them on top of the two cats we already had. Here he is getting ready to take yoga class with me.
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​For more videos like this, follow me on Instagram. (The link is on my Home page.)  It doesn’t look like any of us are going back to work soon, so I will keep making videos and sharing what I know and what I am working on.

Stay happy and healthy! Namaste
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​In my last post I talked about all the things I did NOT do all Summer. I don’t want to leave the impression that I did nothing and have been curled up in a ball in my bed every day. I did a fair amount of that but I really did have a productive and sometimes even fun Summer.
We kicked off the season with our youngest graduating from high school.  While this can be bittersweet, the ending of the high school career, he is staying home and going to school at the University at Buffalo so we didn’t have to do any hard goodbyes. It was a very rewarding moment. He worked so hard all year in AP classes, even ones that he really didn’t need to take, and finished strong with tremendously good grades. I am so proud of him! We hardly had time to celebrate before we were off for the big family vacation.  

​The entire family-me, Mark, the boys, my parents, my siblings and their families-went to Cape Cod to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. All 15 of us! They have been planning this trip for 2 years. We were staying at Green Harbor Resort in West Yarmouth, Ma, spread out among 3 of their quaint cottages. It was a really amazing trip. We were steps from the private beach and heated pool. The beach had lounge chairs and umbrellas so we didn’t have to haul all of our stuff down there every day. It was truly luxurious. Other than a few dinners out, we rarely left the property. We got up early to walk every day. It was so hot all week all we could do after 9am was be by the water and in shade. It was a really nice getaway and so amazing to have the whole family in one place. It rarely happens anymore. The older kids (mine and my sister’s) have school and jobs that make it harder each year for them to be around for trips. I will always cherish this trip. Not sure when we will be able to make it happen again. We can’t even get just the 4 of us in one place more than once a week for dinner.

​Once we were home we did a lot of house projects. Mostly it was preparation to have a graduation party for Evan- outdoor chores like cleaning the garage, cleaning the inside of the house, and getting the gardens up to par. I had started a lot of seedlings early in the Spring in the house and it required a lot of daily nurturing to get the plants to the point of giving us a bountiful harvest. The cucumbers were such a success, that I had to learn how to make pickles so they wouldn’t go to waste. We had a few tomatoes and the peppers are coming now too. The basil and mint are still growing like crazy, so some pesto needs to be made and frozen. I also started dehydrating the herbs for future use.  

​The final big project of the Summer was renovating the basement. It had been a playroom/computer room for the kids for a long time, but I had never finished painting it and it became a catchall for stuff. While Mark and the boys put in new cabinets and redid the floor on the stairs, I cleaned the back unfinished part. There is something so satisfying about putting things in bins and labeling them. It’s nice knowing that if I go downstairs to look for something, I will actually be able to find it. We also manage to get rid of a lot of stuff that we had just been hanging onto for no good reason. It has been really fun hearing the neighbor boy playing with the Nerf guns that have been held hostage in a toy box for close to 10 years. Hearing him yell “Look Mom, Mom are you watching?!” Strangely, I realized that I won’t ever hear those words again.
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We spent all of Labor Day weekend doing exactly that…labor. We finished painting the basement, the side hall, and the trim that was put in the kitchen and dining room when Mark put in the new floors in the Spring. For the first time in 22 years, the house feels “done”. There are no more huge indoor projects hovering over us. The boys’ man cave looks amazing.  The rest of the house is pulled together. The outdoor garden started getting the Fall close down. I pulled out dead flowers and started transplanting things that needed a better space to grow in. We are ready to hunker down for the Fall and Winter as the cold weather starts to close around us.

​It wasn’t all work and no play. We took a long hike and drive around Artpark, Lewiston, and Wilson in the Alfa Romeo Spider on a super hot Sunday. We went to Allentown Art Festival, Glen Park Art Festival, Williamsville Farmer’s Market , and other drives around the city of Buffalo for brunches and other events.  We went to estate sales and thrift store shopping. Visited friends and went to picnics. There were a lot of other things that are still on my “To-Do, Visit, and See list” but they will have to be scheduled into next Summer. This was a busy productive one and it’s time to close the books on it. Good-bye Summer 2018. It’s been great!

I am not perfect. I work hard at personal growth and development but occasionally (ok-more often than I would like to admit) I fall off the wagon. I let everything go. I get lazy. This whole summer has been a train run off its tracks. It started with going on vacation. I have all these superior ideas about how I will go out on the deck and meditate every morning. I will do my yoga practice as the sun comes up. Then I am too tired and want to sleep, or everyone is up and around and I no longer feel like it. I want my coffee. I want to go for a walk. I want to go sit on the beach. I did read a lot, but I didn’t write at all. As my blog followers can see, I haven’t written anything for months. I just let it all go, and not in a good way. I felt paralyzed. By the things I wanted to do but just couldn’t bring myself to do. The less I did, the less I felt like I could do. I knew this feeling. When I get paralyzed by life. It is the first signs that I’ve got a case of the blues. I have little anxiety attacks. I feel tired and unmotivated. I know myself enough to know I need to take action the second it starts to happen, but often it’s easier to say “It’s summer. I can deal with this in the Fall. For now I will eat, drink, sleep, and do everything else later.” Now I am 15 lbs overweight, tired, out of shape, and scared to try to put it all back in order.

I had stopped eating properly, stopped going to the gym, stopped taking my vitamins, and stopped taking Epsom salt baths and doing other self-care routines that I know are so helpful. I just stopped caring about taking care of me. It is really hard to right the train when it is that far off the tracks. But it will happen by taking one step at t time. The first step was to write out a food plan and I gave myself a start date-day after Labor Day. On Monday I prepped the food for the week so there were no excuses. In writing out my food calendar I also wrote in time for meditation and going to the gym (I didn't actually get there yet but...). If they are not written into the agenda, I know they won’t happen. I have all the time in the world to meditate when I get home from work and often I wake up way earlier in the morning than I need to and could do it then. I let myself get wrapped up in the phone or TV and just don’t do it. A written plan helps. Transparency helps. It makes you accountable to the people you tell your plan to.

I have been working on the food part of the plan for a few days now. It’s not easy but it is a start. One step at a time. I write this because it is my truth. It is real. It is transparent. I think too often we put ourselves out into the world as an idealized version of ourselves. But the truth is we all fall down and make mistakes. Without acknowledging these things about ourselves, how can we expect to grow and change and learn?  Every personal battle I conquer is leading me to handle the next one better. With time, maybe I’ll have fewer personal issues to battle because I will have learned from the previous ones or maybe they will just be completely different ones because I have different stuff to learn. Anyway, I am a warrior and I am going to war with these demons that are currently haunting me. To be cliché – I WILL SURVIVE.

​People always give me a double take when I tell them that I teach ballet and karate. And now that I have added yoga into my teaching repertoire, the looks are even more stunned. Everyone’s initial impression is that they are so contradictory and opposed to each other. Ballet and Yoga are so soft and pretty and feminine. Karate is so hard hitting and macho. Yin and yang.

But I have always seen them as being so much the same, complimentary and analogous arts. I see the beauty of the movement arts and the discipline behind each one. They all have a deep and extensive history, reaching back centuries to many different countries and continents.  Foreign language is used in all three arts. We use Japanese terms in karate, ballet terminology is in French, and all yoga poses are in Sanskrit. They have all fractured from their original incarnation into numerous branches, crossing borders and nations, reaching people all over the world.
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I love that they all have structured physical techniques, which is what I generally teach, yet there is tremendous opportunity for mental exploration to find deeper movements and meaning in what you are doing. In karate, we have bunkai, the application of the movements in the katas as real life self-defense. We can break down each move of every kata (form) and extrapolate many different ways of responding to an attack. We can look at each move individually or in conjunction with moves before or after.  They also incorporate hidden pressure point techniques. The katas are an encyclopedia of self defense. There are also katas that incorporate the use of traditional weapons.

In yoga there are hundreds of poses with hundreds of variations. Learning and exploring a few basic poses and their possible modifications can be a study unto itself.   There are a number of props that can be used to alter the poses to accomplish different kinds of movement and mobility. There are straps, blocks, blankets, and bolsters (*see bottom of page for links).  They can change a pose from being active to restful, or take a restful pose and create muscle activity where it didn’t exist before.  Within the practice of yoga, there are actually eight limbs, only one of which is the practice of the poses.   Breathing (pranayama) and meditation are two other limbs that are critically important to the tradition and way of yoga. Both of these practices are also part of the martial arts.

In ballet there is the structured technical classroom work, much like in the other arts I have mentioned. The barre exercises are repeated over and over again, as they are the building blocks of the rest of the more complicated steps that are used in choreography. The more advanced students can graduate to working en pointe, wearing pointe shoes with a hardened rigid box to allow them to dance on the tips of their toes, creating the illusion of ease and lightness.  There is also the performance aspect of finding your character and discovering how to bring the music and choreography to life in your dance.  This is quite similar to the practice of exploring the bunkai of the katas in karate.  ​

There is also so much you can discover and learn even when you aren’t in the studio. You can always be thinking and exploring the nature of the arts. There are so many books on each subject. If you are interested in the history of ballet, Apollo’s Angels-A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans is a must read.  It is the most complete ballet history book I have ever read. There are also innumerable biographies on many interesting people from the ballet world.

​A friend of mine recently published a book about Karate.  Isshin-Ryu Karate-Do, An Instructor’s Manual was written by Shihan Bill Reynolds. It is rich with the history of Isshin-Ryu Karate, as well as teaching and training tips.  

​Yoga books run the gamut from history and anatomy to meditation, breathing, and self growth, since the physical portion of yoga asana is a small aspect of the training, contrary to popular belief.  I can’t say I have one favorite right now, as I am constantly immersing myself in new ones each week but I did enjoy reading Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda and The Bhagavad-Gita, a classic work, in preparation for Yoga Teacher Training. They set a tone for me that prepared me for the extent of the learning that was going to transpire over the following year.  And the learning goes on and on and on…

​In each of these arts there are many history books, biographies, technical training books, teaching methodologies, and anatomy books. If you want any more book recommendations, I would be happy to share additional ideas from my personal library and “to-read” lists.
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What are your favorite books related to your art or sport? I am always eager for new suggestions. Comment here or contact me on Facebook or Instagram.

*We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites

We did it. We went away without a plan or schedule or reservation. The information we needed, appeared as it was necessary in a very synchronistic manner.  When we got to Virginia Beach we decided it wasn’t the atmosphere we wanted to stay in so we kept on driving until we got to the Outer Banks in NC. If I had preplanned, we would have been stuck staying in Virginia Beach, because that was where I originally thought I would make reservations.  It was how the idea of the trip started…going to Virginia Beach and that was it.  Later the plan was revised to keep driving south to get to where it was a bit warmer and so that I could see the Outer Banks.

When we arrived on the Outer Banks at dinner time, we found the restaurant that had been recommended to us no problem.  The Black Pelican has a long history of serving people who visit the Outer Banks. I have had many people comment to me since hearing we were there, that they always go there when they are in town. The background story about this restaurant and how it was named is quite interesting.

http://blackpelican.com/cms/history

There were no rooms at any of the hotels as we rolled along the Outer Banks. We called a couple places, but it was Easter week so a lot of schools were on Spring break. When Mark went into one of the hotels on the beach to inquire, they had just given out their last room but they handed him a brochure about the Outer Banks. He doesn’t remember opening the brochure but as he handed it to me it was open to a page and the name and pictures just struck me. We pulled out our phones to look up their website and just had that knowing feeling that it was our kind of place. We called, and the manager Randy said he had room for us, he lived on property, and gave us his cell number to call when we got up there. It was a good 30 minute drive from where we had dinner. The Inn at Corolla Light    was everything we could have hoped for. The room was on the 2nd floor, had a fireplace and sliding glass doors to the deck overlooking the water. We have had experiences in the past where hotels near water smell musty and feel damp. The room smelled perfect and was beautifully furnished.  If you look at their website, check out room 48. The decor has been updated as can be seen in some of my pictures.
www.innatcorolla.com/

The only thing that I had been researching a bit and really wanted to do while in NC other than just walk on the beach was to see the wild mustangs. That same serendipitous brochure had a list of about 10 places that ran tours. One happened to be right next door to the Inn, but after looking up a couple from the brochure on the internet, again I was just struck by one of them and decided to call. As luck would have it, they had a tour going out at 10:30 that morning so we had plenty of time to venture out for breakfast at Duck Donuts (when in Rome...)

I was hoping to get to an early tour because the weather was expected to turn early that afternoon. It didn’t and ended up exactly how I had visualized it the week before, a perfect afternoon for walking along the beach, collecting shells and rocks. More on that later.
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We drove about a half mile down the road to Corolla Outback Adventure. http://corollaoutback.com/  Our driver Kurt regaled us with stories of that end of the Outer Banks and the history of the horses. It was early in the season so no horses were out and about. But once again serendipity came into our trip. Kurt’s wife texted him that there was a horse in their back yard. He drove us to his house and let us stand in his pool area to look over the fence to see the horse. If we had been on any other tour that day, it was unlikely that we would have seen any horses. Even though that was the only horse we saw that day, the ride itself along the beach and into this “off the pavement” neighborhood was well worth the trip.

​We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the area around the Corolla Lighthouse and walking along the beach on the ocean side. We walked for about 2 hours on the beach, watching the radar and clouds.  Mark kept reminding me that I had already said and manifested that the day was going to be perfect so I just had to relax and let it go. I had visualized walking on the beach in perfect weather the previous week. The storm stayed to the north of us and we had a beautiful afternoon. We finally ran into the storm as we drove south to search out a place to have dinner. It was a doozy! But when we got back to our room to see the sunset off our deck it was incredible. The dozens of pictures I have can’t even do it justice.

​If we had been traveling with the boys or other people, the opportunity to be so totally carefree and irresponsible about making plans probably wouldn’t have worked. But since we answered to no one but ourselves, we moved on when we didn’t want to stay somewhere, like Virginia Beach, and stopped on a whim when we did want to see something, as we did as we drove through Williamsburg and when we decided to go to Annapolis before we went to Baltimore earlier in the week. The trip was enjoyable and relaxing and unpressured.  My past travel plans have usually been a strict itinerary of all the places we had to go see and which restaurants we should eat at. I never really stopped to enjoy the journey and spent too much time worried about getting all the activities in.  I put stress on not only myself but all the people around me. This serendipitous way of traveling may not work for every destination, like any beach location in the height of summer, but it is a much less stressful way of traveling for me. It goes back to the idea I had expressed in a previous blog about expectations.  Reality never quite lives up to expectations, but reality itself can often be quite awesome!

​Check it out here:when-reality-doesnt-meet-expectations.html

*There are no affiliate links in this article. I have not received anything in exchange for this review. I just truly like to share the good things in life. Namaste!

In January of 2018 I decided not to make a resolution of the traditional kind, such as to lose weight, read more, go on a diet, or work out more.  I decided that I would make self-care a priority. It’s a catchy phrase that kept popping up in social media, but it was more than that to me.  I felt like I had been on the hamster wheel of life. I had been sick for most of the fall, was working too much, and sleeping too little. There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to self-care routines. It is not even possible to do all of them in a given day, but I decided to mindfully try to do a few each day. Some of the things I had read about and tried on occasion include Ayurvedic treatments like dry brushing, oil pulling, tongue scraping, and sesame oil massage.  Other healthful things that I take part in more regularly include Epsom salt baths, sinus rinsing, yoga, meditation, journaling, eating right, drinking lots of water or green tea, taking vitamins and supplements, exercising, and getting proper sleep.  ​

​Let’s be real here. Who has enough time in the day to do ALL of the things that we are supposed to do to stay healthy and centered? Most morning I have 20 minutes to shower, dry my hair, dress, put on a little makeup and grab some water to take to work with me. I know I “should” get up a bit earlier to do my meditation for 10 minutes and dry brush and oil before my shower, but the draw of sleep is just too great. If I do wake up, I sit there numbly drinking the coffee my husband kindly makes every morning…usually with one eye still mostly closed and the other just a slit.

The first step for me was to actually put a few items on my calendar. On one weekend night and at least one weeknight when I knew I would be home, I put a bath on the calendar. I try to get into the bath tub with my Epsom Salts (*see below for link) and essential oils at least twice a week. I like lavender at night and eucalyptus when I have a cold. Since I keep the raw silk dry brushing gloves* right by the tub, it was easy enough to do that before I got in. While in the tub, I either read or listen to a mindful podcasts or meditate. I love Insight Timer for meditations. You can do just a timer, or music, or guided meditations based on how much time you have or what issue you are working on. You can also follow specific people whose guided meditations you like. ​

​Podcasts I follow include Dr. Wayne Dyer, The Mindbodygreen Podcast, The Lively Show, and The West Wing Weekly, to name a few. (OK, maybe they are not ALL mindful podcasts, but it’s The West Wing! How can I resist!!) I also listen to them whenever I am in the car so I rarely listen to the radio anymore.
 
Yoga is already on my calendar as a permanent item every Sunday morning (besides all the classes I teach during the week). Meditation I calendared for afternoons when I got home from my day job, before I left to teach. It is not a perfect plan, as some afternoons don’t have enough time, so I would try to slip in a few minutes before bed.  Sometimes I would even just do a 2-3 minute meditation in my car before I walked into work. I feel better when I do it so now it feels more urgent for me to slide it into the cracks of time I have. In the past I never prioritized it.  When we know better (or feel better), we do better.
 
Some things I haven’t put on the calendar and just do them on an as-needed basis. Sinus rinsing* is definitely my go-to when my allergies are acting up or I have a cold, but I must admit, it is totally off my radar when I am feeling well. Allergy season will hit again soon, so I am sure it will become a regular habit again.  It is the same with taking herbs and vitamins. I remember them when I am feeling tired or lethargic. I remember Turmeric and Glucosamine when my body is in pain.  Proper sleep is always a priority and I try to be asleep by 10:30pm at the latest most days of the week.  By mindfully paying attention to the cues my body gives me, I know when I need to use one of my self-care rituals.
 
Make a list of the items that you want to prioritize and put them on your calendar. Make them an appointment with yourself that is non-negotiable. Making you a priority is the first step to Self-Care. You can’t properly care for anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself first.

Namaste!

*We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites

I had some photos done of me in some inversion poses and it’s interesting to see what things really look like.  It is certainly not what it feels like, especially when you are upside down. The pictures show that I am very far away from the wall, but I felt like I was too close. I felt like my legs in Scorpion were pretty close to my head. Not so much! When I feel like my legs are straight up in the air, they aren’t. As a dancer, I grew up using the mirror as a tool to ensure that things looked like they were supposed to, to make sure we were dancing in synch, to see how high we were jumping. Ten years of Bikram yoga (plus the 20 prior years of ballet training) reinforced my need to have the mirror as a tool to see if my poses looked the way they were supposed to. Moving into working on different yoga styles and poses without a mirror has been challenging for me. I have to rely solely on my inner perceptions to evaluate the “correctness” of the posture. Standing in Warrior II, I can see my feet; see if my knee is lined up over my toes and whether my back hip is aligned to the side of my mat. Upside down, working on handstand or forearm stand, I have to “feel” for alignment or use outside sources, like a friend or photo, for feedback.
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Isn’t this often the way of life? We perceive things one way, but someone has a different perception that they reflect back to us. Reality lies somewhere in-between. This often happens when I am discussing memories with family members. We may both remember an event, but what was significant enough for each of us to remember is completely different. The emotion attached to the memory is not the same.  Sometimes one has a memory of a place or event and the other claims to have never been there. The reality is that neither one is absolutely correct and therein lies the issue. Am I having a “wrong” memory? Did my brain change the events in my mind to make them fit what I wanted reality to be? Did the other person? I read somewhere that none of our memories are actually memorized events and only about 50% of them are actually true.  They are stories that we plant, and each time we bring up the story in our minds eye, we may actually be re-writing it. No memory is absolute. It is often colored by the emotions we were feeling at the time the event occurred.  This is an interesting perspective to consider. I see that as an opportunity to learn a lesson and move on, especially if the emotion it brings up is a negative one. Does the memory of where we did or didn’t go to dinner 20 years ago really matter? Or is there a lesson in the memory or story we are telling ourselves? If there is not something that I need to look at and learn from, it is time to move on from that memory. The memory of a dinner may not be important, but maybe the lesson of how important family time is why I needed to “remember” it and discuss it. Sometimes we remember things with a negative emotion and each time we bring it up, we are just replenishing that negativity in our bodies.  Those are definitely memories I can do without. But again, the lesson is there. There is either someone I need to forgive or show compassion to, or I need to replace that emotion with a more positive one. Can I take that negative memory and re-categorize it in my brain to see something positive in it? Repaint the picture?

Like those pictures of my yoga asana, we can and should use these brain pictures or “memories” to make adjustments in our current situations, not dwell on the past or let it keep us stuck.  It’s not easy but through meditation and mindfulness I do trust that it is possible. We can rewire our brain and change the lens through which we choose to view our lives.

Have you ever planned a trip or day outing and things just don’t work out the way you plan?  You gas up the car, make your hotel reservations, have the directions on hand, and then when you get there things don’t quite work out the way you plan. When I plan a trip, I have an idea in my head what the hotel will be like and what our outings and experiences will be. I used to hyper schedule every day and every outing, but between kids and weather, I learned the hard way that this was just setting me up for a letdown. 

When reality is different than those expectations it can be hard to digest. Things never look like they do on the website pictures. Items on the map may be closer (or further!) than they appear. Pools are ALWAYS much smaller than they show on the brochures and websites. The 10-day forecast may be completely wrong. Kids get sick. Tickets are sold out. Lines are too long.  Don’t preconceived notions just set us up for disappointment?

We form these ideas based on pictures we have seen, previous experiences, what people have told us, and maybe even stuff we’ve seen on TV. What a different experience we might have if we go into it with no expectations at all. Hard to do, but a goal worth aspiring to, I think. It is mindfulness at its highest level. Really living in and appreciating the moment. Letting go of expectations.

Planning is one thing, and often necessary when you need tickets or reservations, and budgeting for things, but doing it without pre-experiencing the outcome is another. We are leaving next week for another trip.  We are staying with friends for part of the trip and winging it for the rest. Literally, winging it…no reservations and no concrete plan where we will end up. All I know is that we will travel south from where our friends house in the DC area along the Atlantic Coast/Outer Banks region for a few days. Over the last few years, when we travel, we have started to rely on websites like HotWire.com to find a nice hotel in the area we want to stay.  It has proven to provide us with wonderful surprises over the last few years.  Even when we do it last minute! In Chicago, we found ourselves on a very high floor of a gorgeous hotel overlooking the river and the Magnificent Mile for under $100 per night!  Now this is where I have to check my expectations. We have had amazing luck in our travels before. Where we end up staying really isn’t that important, as long as it’s clean. It is just a place to rest our heads for the evening until our travel adventure continues the next day.
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We may plan certain outings with our friends, as they like to share their hometown with us. We have been to some of the places in the DC area before so we at least know what the environment is at some of the locations we may go, but I will be trying not to anticipate the experience this year. If we see cherry blossoms, Great! If not, I will focus on all the other beautiful things there that I have not seen before.  When we return to venues and monuments we have been to before, I plan to see them with new eyes. What did I not see the first time around, when I was traveling as a mom of 2 boys who needed to be entertained and watched constantly so they wouldn’t wander away or touch something they shouldn’t?  When we traveled with the boys, I wanted so much for them to enjoy themselves and remember the trips we took. As a mom, I was trying to see and experience things through their eyes. I was setting an expectation for them and myself and the events that it would be memorable or wonderful or worthwhile. It will be a completely new exercise for me to really experience a trip for myself, seeing things anew, through my own adult eyes…with no expectations. Bon Voyage!

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