Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. ~Estonian Proverb

It’s interesting how the month of November rolls around and suddenly we remember to be thankful. Then even before the leftovers are put away, and we have digested our pie, we are swept up in the rush of Christmas.  For many of us, that thankfulness goes right out  the window until next year. Almost as if we store up our thankful thoughts solely for Thanksgiving, and then having checked it off the list, we move on.

Like all things in life, gratitude is not black and white. Most of us have
the skills to say thank you to those who have helped us. We thank the cashier who checks out our groceries, the mechanic who repairs our vehicle, the person who cares for our children. These ‘thank yous’ make the people who have been helpful to us feel acknowledged, which is good, of course, but the shades of gratitude ask us to go beyond the every day ‘thank yous.’ Gratitude must be practiced each day, or we lose it.

It’s in being thankful for the things we often take advantage of that need
our awareness.  In our society we seem to feel that we are entitled to everything we wish for.  And while it is our birthright to live in abundance, we need to be worthy of that abundance.  Part of this comes from hard work and perseverance, however, the other part comes from gratitude.  When we make time in our lives to be thankful for the blessings we have, more blessings come to us.  We must be grateful of what we have to attract more of what we wish for. 

There are times that we find ourselves caught in a negative spiral.  Nothing seems to go our way. We just can’t seem to catch a break. We forget about all the good in our lives. We start to feel sorry for ourselves and wonder why our luck is just so bad.  These feelings often lead us to quick fixes to make ourselves feel better. We turn to chocolate, alcohol, shopping, whining, whatever, as we try to fill up the hole inside. This never works. These behaviors ultimately make our problems worse.

When we stop and make space in our heads, and our hearts, to be grateful for all the little things we have, we start to appreciate our lives a bit more. The negative spiral is disrupted, making room for positive energy to blossom.  Once we go beyond the obvious things to be thankful for we may feel stuck. We need to dig deeper than being thankful for family and friends, because it's the smaller things take us closer to living our gratitude. One teeny tiny moment of gratitude at a time leads us to living a more abundant life.  That’s not to say that giving thanks will make all the problems of the world go away, but it’s a start.  As Gandhi said, “you must be the change you wish to see in the world". We must commit to being thankful and expressing our gratitude, even on our toughest days.  The rest will come. It might not come pouring down in buckets, but by practicing expressing our gratitude, each day our lights will shine a little brighter, causing the lights inside the people around us to shine a little brighter as well. Eventually we’ll come to see that our lives are full of abundance and we have a lot to be grateful for.  It isn’t something we do once a year, it must be part of who we are. This is living our gratitude.

How come every time I print new schedules I need to change them? It happens every single time. It doesn’t matter how much I plan, or how much feedback I collect before putting a new schedule together. Every time I head to the copy store I know I will be back within two days to do it all over again. My kids have a lovely collection of colored scrap paper to doodle on from all of the out-of-date schedules floating about the house. Their art is now sponsored by Growing Yogis. The only thing I have learned from this, so far, is only to print a few at a time.

I think this speaks to not really being able to plan anything entirely. 
There is a saying that keeps popping up in everything I read:
 “Man plans, God laughs.”  This seems to hold true in my world lately.  It can be so incredibly frustrating to watch the best laid plans crumble at our feet. Life's little speed bumps. We grasp at holding it all together but when it gets right down to it, there is simply nothing we can do but to go with it. 

Yoga teaches us to practice non-grasping. Letting go. Going with the flow.
Spontaneity. Change.  Embracing the unexpected.  Rolling with it. Thinking on the fly. These are not my favorite games to play. Lately, though, these are the things that are challenging me.  From tropical storms that steal my power, to locating a new preschool four days before school is scheduled to begin, I am rolling with it. Or, at least I am working on rolling with it.

Controlling the need to not control the uncontrollable is my paradox.  This
is where my work is at the moment.  My yoga.  Yoga isn’t all physical. It isn’t all about having a flexible body, or the ability to sit still, focus on your
breath, and meditate. We have to live it. Put it into practice and live it.
Easier said than done, as usual. 

Go ahead and make your plans. It’s great to have plans. Just be prepared to
accept that you may have to change them. And maybe check the schedule on the website before you head on over to class.

As far as kids go, I can’t really complain too much about mine (see them here looking so very sweet). They eat veggies, most of the time. They go to bed without a fuss, usually. They share, except with each other. And they give really good hugs. There are those times though…...those times when they show their other sides that I sometimes hit a wall as a mom. We’ve all been there. That moment when you simply do not know how to respond to what they throw at you.

We see these parents whose kids talk back, won’t stay in their beds, refuse to eat any thing that isn’t white, interrupt constantly, run in the other direction when they hear their name called, scream loudly in inappropriate places, snatch toys from their playmates, hit and kick their parents, and pick prize boogers out of their noses to pop into their precious little mouths. Often times we watch in silent horror, while in our minds, we judge their parenting. ‘Well‘, we think, ‘if only she had some control over that child‘. ‘If only, they disciplined her better‘. ‘If only, they stopped caving in to his tantrums’. These parents feel our eyes on them. They feel our silent horror. They know we are judging them. And they are powerless to stop it, because, as you know if you have kids, we have all been there at some point. We have all given in to our children at some point, just to get them to stop. Stop, already, you win.

We’ve all felt the eyes on us when it’s OUR child acting up in a way we don’t like. Sometimes it isn’t even that our kids are misbehaving it’s that they aren't behaving in the way we want them to. They won’t say hello to the co-worker we bump into at a restaurant. They won’t play with the other kids at the playground when we have only brought them there to get a much needed respite from their endless chatter. They won’t participate in a class that we thought they would love when we signed them up, and paid an outrageous fee to attend.

Parents sometimes conveniently forget that all kids have issues. We can parent them to the moon and back but when it comes right down to it no child can be forced to be the person our expectations want them to be. It’s easy to make ourselves feel better by judging the other parents who are struggling with the same issues we face. We tell ourselves, our spouses, our friends, how we would do it differently. It takes a bit more effort to support each other. Take turns switching kids with a friend so you each get a break. Engage the mom at the playground, who is clearly one step away from losing her mind (you know her because you have been her), in a conversation. Before becoming a mom I would never engage strangers in conversation. After a few years at home watching ‘Little Bear’ I would talk to anyone who would listen. Ask for help when you need it. There is no shame in admitting you are stumped. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh set of eyes and ears to work something out. We parents are a team and we need to work together. Team Parent! Who’s with me?!

It has been my long-standing belief that our children will tell us what they need from us. All we need to do is to know how to listen and decide how to respond. We don’t always have the answer. A good parent doesn’t have all the answers to all the problems they will face while raising a child. Instead, a good parent makes the time to find and try solutions until they hit on the one that works.If we start a new job we usually have some sort of training before we begin. Parenting doesn't work that way.  The training isn't handed to you. It doesn't always come naturally. Sometimes you need to seek it out.  I’ve heard friends say they don’t believe in parenting books. I agree to a point. A parenting book isn’t designed to give you concrete answers about your child. Not all ideas work with all kids, or all families for that matter. What a good parenting book can do is give you a set of guidelines to go by so that you can then make educated decisions about the dilemmas you will face as a parent. One of my favorite parenting authors is Louise Bates Ames, Ph.D. Her series of books begins with Your One Year Old: Fun Loving and Fussy, and continues on up to Your Ten-Fourteen Year Old. In each of these short books there are guidelines about development. What to expect from certain ages, and suggestions about appropriate discipline. Also in each book is a healthy dose of realism. A parenting attitude adjustment, if you will. Sometimes it isn't the child's behavior we need to change, it's our own.

My family and friends have children of various ages from those still in the womb to teens. I don’t know their children as well as they do. I do know that what works for my family can’t possibly work for all of theirs, because all these little people are so very different. My kids are not perfect, nor do I want them to be. We take one day at a time and do what we can.

Do you have an issue that your family is struggling with that you could use a suggestion for? Do you have a tip to share? Post it here and become part of our parenting team.



　

　

　

Making time to practice yoga every day doesn’t work for all of us. Sometime finding more than five minutes of uninterrupted time can be an impossible task. Especially if your house is inhabited by the under 10 crowd as mine is. So we need to get creative. We need to sneak in the yoga. One way to do this is by moving with intention. By paying attention to what goes on below our necks. Most of us spend a great deal of our day in our brains. One of the reasons our bodies crave yoga is because it takes our awareness away from the thoughts that race through our heads and down into our bodies. You don’t need an hour long class every day to get to that place. Here are a few ways that I get sneaky about incorporating my yoga practice into my day:

3 Minute Meditation - Fill a laundry basket and tell your people that you are going to your room to fold laundry and, if they follow you, they have to help. Ok, so maybe it isn’t 100% truthful, but it is in the best interest of everyone in your household. Once safely in your room, close the door, sit on the floor, close your eyes, and tell yourself that you are breathing in and breathing out. All it takes is a few minutes of this to feel like a whole new person. I find this to be a particularly helpful tool when my brain is overwhelmed and gearing up for an anxiety attack.

Check in with your feet - Each time you find yourself standing in one place for any extended period of time (like washing dishes) , check in with your feet. For most of us our toes point out to the sides when we aren‘t paying attention. Turn them so they face forward. This small change will travel up your legs and knees and into your hips. Now, take it a step further, if you’d like, and think Mountain Pose with those legs. Use your core muscles too and washing the dishes is a whole new event.

And speaking of feet...use your whole foot - Each time you are getting up from a seated position or climbing stairs place your whole foot on the floor or step. No more running on the stairs on tip toes. This will again engage more muscles in your legs and bottom. When these muscles are working you are also taking some of the stress off your knees. Think of all the work your legs can get while you run upstairs to tuck your child back into bed seventeen times.

Sit on the floor - Skip chairs whenever you can. Sitting on the floor requires your hips to stretch, creating flexibility. The more opportunities you give your hips to stretch, the happier they become. Happy hips, happy body.

Picking things up - How many times a day do you bend over to pick things up? Every time you bend over think about putting some yoga into action. Fold over into a forward bend with intention instead of just reaching and grabbing. Pull in those core muscles and try it with your legs together (Uttanasana), legs apart (Prasarita Padottanasana), one leg up in a standing split, over to the side on one leg (Ardha Chandrasana - Half moon), you get the idea.

Find a little balance - Any time you find yourself standing in one place for any period of time, take a leg up off the floor and find your tree pose. Maybe it won’t build your focus the same way it will in a yoga class, but it will work your feet and strengthen your ankles. Remember to do both sides.

Use your tummy wisely - Engage your core muscles often. These muscles support your spine. By toning your core you are helping to prevent back injuries, as well as allowing your spine to elongate itself. This creates more space on the sides of your body, which in turn creates a slimmer appearance. So, sitting at your desk, driving in your car, taking a walk, wherever, pull in your core. It’s like a stomach crunch without all the fuss. Think about your core muscles wrapping around from the sides of your body to the center and then draw them up towards your rib cage. In and up, baby, in and up.

Butterflies in Bed - Baddhakonasana, Butterfly pose, is super easy to sink into while lying in bed or watching TV. Lie down in bed, or prop your back up on some pillows on the floor, bring your feet together and draw them in towards your groin. Use blankets or pillows under your knees for a little extra support if you’d like. Ahhh…..yummy.

Be thankful - Show gratitude for all that you have. We all have things we want, but sometimes its hard to remember to be grateful for what we already have. When we can begin to appreciate all that we do have our perspective begins to shift. We begin to see that often times we have what we need, and all the rest is just gravy.

I opened this week’s issue of Newsweek after a conversation with my mother. She had asked if I read it yet and what my thoughts were. The article is titled “Bow Down to the Yoga Teacher”. It’s about the relationship between yoga teachers, their students and their egos. And it makes me angry.

Not angry at Newsweek, or the author Casey Schwartz, but angry at these teachers of yoga. In the article Schwartz writes “Do yoga, transcend your ego and discover your inner humility- at least that’s the idea behind this ancient spiritual practice” and then goes on to rail against the “celebrity teachers’ who are so ego driven they have lost the reasons behind why we practice yoga in the first place.

The western practice of yoga has come under fire in the last ten years or so (probably longer but I was peacefully unaware). In the east yoga is a much more spiritual practice. It isn’t the tool for fitness that we most often see here. I’ve experienced spiritual awakenings through yoga and I’ve also seen the physical changes that it has brought to my body so I guess I fall somewhere in the middle of the why-to-do-yoga spectrum. I don’t see the harm in using yoga to achieve physical fitness as some of my colleagues do. I think that anything that gets people off the couch and in their bodies is worthwhile. If you are attending yoga classes simply to complement your weight training or cardio work-out, SUPER. At least you are doing yoga. Maybe you won’t meet your true self or access your inner energy, but you’re being active. You are lowering your stress level, you are building strength and flexibility, you are gaining all the health benefits that yoga brings.

Yoga is more accessible now than it has ever been. Yoga is everywhere. We no longer need to seek out gurus so that they may deem us worthy of their wisdom because yoga is almost on as many street corners as Starbucks. There are so many varieties of yoga it can make it hard to choose where to go to a class when we’ve decided that we want to go to a class. Keeping in mind that all teachers are not created equal, we also need to keep trying until we find the teacher that is right for us. It shouldn’t come down to who is the most famous as much as it comes down to who works best for you. I’m not suggesting that instructors who have been teaching for a lifetime shouldn’t be sought out and praised, or that they don’t have something to offer us, but they are still only human. Sometimes we build people up in our minds, putting them on pedestals. It can be disappointing when that pedestal crumbles.

The ‘celebrity’ teachers seem to have forgotten, as Schwartz puts it, “the fact that they were ever students themselves”. There is a yoga instructor in my community, who I greatly respect, who attended a class with a well-known teacher a year or so ago in Portland. It was an event. There were pre-requisites for the class, such as being able to be in unsupported headstand for 15 minutes. This is a teacher who my friend greatly admired. During the questions and answer period, my friend asked a question regarding a pose, which was apparently a mistake. The teacher verbally berated her in front of the entire class for wasting her time with such a trivial question. Huh? Isn’t that the point of teachers? To answer questions. I remember in middle school hearing a teacher state that there are no stupid questions. Talk about ego.

We do not come to yoga to be judged. We come to learn. We do not come to make our teachers feel good. We come to make ourselves feel good. Whatever one’s reason for practicing yoga, we should leave feeling better than we did when we arrived. That isn’t going to happen if our teachers think of themselves as gods. In the world of yoga instructors I am an infant. I know that there is a lot I have yet to learn. I know that I the longer I teach, the better the teacher I will be. I also that there is one thing I will carry with me through my career: my classes will be accessible to my students. I will not judge. I will not condemn. I will continuously check in with myself to be sure I am practicing my yamas and niyamas and not letting my ego take over. My classes will be places to ask questions and get answers. Maybe I won’t have your answer right away but I will find it for you or better yet, I will help you find it for yourself. I am not a “yoga diva” nor do I want to become one.

I think that articles like Schwartz’s are important because yoga students or potential yoga students need to know that yoga is for everyone. If teachers behave as deities, yoga loses its user-friendliness and people stop practicing. Of course the die-hards will still keep on but the rest of us will get left behind. Those of us who are out-of-shape, overweight couch potatoes will never try yoga. We will never find the life changing peace it can bring. We will never meet the muscles that have hidden dormant in our bodies. We will never stop and breathe. So don’t bow down to me. I am no one special. I don’t care if you are a vegetarian or can stand in headstand. I am a yoga teacher and I appreciate your stupid questions, so bring them on.

This week has come with defining moments. Opportunities for me to grow as a person, a teacher and a business owner. Light bulb moments, when if you were a cartoon character, a light bulb would suddenly appear over your head when you hit upon a brilliant idea. I believe that it is what you do with such moments that make or break you.

In the time since I began my journey through yoga until now I have been pretty focused on the physical side of yoga. I have spent my yoga time practicing asanas (poses), preparing class plans and teaching my small classes. I have studied the yamas and niyamas and worked to put them to good use in my life and practice. I have experienced energy moving through my body. I have understood, although not made much time for the spirituality of yoga. The piece that had escaped me was meditation. A few months ago a friend asked me to teach her how to meditate, and I laughed. Can’t teach something I hadn’t successfully learned to do. Recent events in my life have begun to shift my yoga practice from a purely physical one into something entirely different.

I have begun to find the benefits in meditation. It happened quite unintentionally. I didn’t decide to sit and meditate, one of those light bulbs I mentioned suddenly went off and I found myself sitting on a bolster, breathing into the quiet of the room around me. Things suddenly became very clear to me. And then after the first time, it has come to be easier and easier. When faced with a decision to make, instead of frantically rushing head-long into a choice (a choice I will most likely come to regret), I have been able to sit and breathe. I have successfully turned off my brain and surrendered myself to trusting that an answer will come to me when I am ready to receive it. Thus the light bulbs. Answers to my dilemmas are falling into my lap. That’s not to say that the solutions are easy. Some will take quite a lot of work. Some answers bring more choices. Choices about how hard I want to work to solve the problems.

Not solving your problems is quite easy. Sometimes we have the answers and know what we need to do to achieve our goals but the work involved scares us away. For some of us the concept of success in our lives causes anxiety. We sabotage ourselves so that success slips from our grasp. Or, the opposite happens. We grasp at what we want so intensely that we can’t see when things are no longer working. Practicing meditation can provide an opportunity to step back from whatever issue we might be facing so that we might see it from a different perspective. I’m not suggesting that meditation can solve everything. We know that we can’t expect a light bulb moment every time we meditate. But at the very least, we stop, we breathe. Sometimes that’s all we really need is a chance to breathe.

The journey continues through yoga and through life. Finding time to sit with the stillness is now a priority in my life. Making room for meditation defines me. What defines you?

A friend texted me the other day that her 15 month old could do down dog upon request. It made me smile because there aren’t many things that 15 month olds will do when you ask them. This little guy has two older sisters who have been in yoga classes since September and a mom who comes to class every week so he is certainly exposed to yoga. It started me thinking though, of how kids are naturally drawn to yoga, with or without formal instruction.

As a child, if you checked on me while I was sleeping, you would often find me on my back with my legs in baddhakonasana (butterfly pose). It just felt right to me. My yoga teacher recalls sitting in poses before she ever even heard the word yoga. Kids listen to their bodies in a way that we seem to forget how to do as adults. Kids move because it feels good, not because they are trying to get the recommended 30 minutes of exercise each day. They don’t care about the health benefits of yoga as long as they are having fun. Kids don’t care if they are in yoga clothes or on a mat, they’ll do yoga anywhere. Deep into a game of Candy-land, during one of our many snow days last week, my own three year old spent the time waiting for her next turn in the one-legged variation of down dog. I marveled at her ability pop back and forth between unintentional yoga and moving her red plastic gingerbread man down the rainbow path to the Kandy Kastle (their spelling not mine).

Winter in New England is tricky with little people. We can’t get outside as much as we need to. Schools are closed with no notice due to weather we can’t control. The sun seems to disappear for weeks at a time. Cabin fever begins to set in and once it does all bets are off. Most of us fight it, at least for awhile. We complain, we overeat, we exercise less. Our bodies crave hibernation. More than once I have wished I was a bear who could fall asleep around Thanksgiving and wake up in April. Even if you enjoy winter sports and activities there comes that moment when you have had enough. Kids don’t seem to fight it as adults do. Kids surrender to the joys of winter and all that it entails. They are blissfully unaware of the scheduling nightmares snow days create. They are happy to use their ‘outside voices’ inside. They make fun and find movement wherever they are, because that’s what kids do. This makes winter is the perfect time to bring yoga into your family. Kids crave movement. Movement is good. It’s too easy to curl up with a book on a chilly day.

If you are feeling the need to move, or even if you aren’t, but you know you need to, here are a few tricks to have up your sleeve as we watch January crawl slowly into February:

Musical mats: Just like musical chairs but with yoga mats and pose cards. When the music stops you hop on the mat closest to you and come into the pose on the card. (a Child Light Yoga game)

Toss-Across yoga style: Remember Toss-Across, the tic-tac-toe game played with bean bags? Using index cards draw poses on the cards and tape over the X’s and O’s. Chuck a bean bag at it and have everyone come into the pose that gets flipped. Three in a row and everybody wins. You could do the same game without the Toss-Across board, by mixing up the cards and placing them face down.

Down Dog Tunnels: This is a favorite with preschoolers. Take turns coming into down dog and the other person rolls a ball under you. Seem kind of boring? Not if you’re three. If you are three, it’s a hoot!

Yoga Flow Collages: Cut up all those old issues of Yoga Journal and put them to work. For younger kids the simple act of cutting and gluing is all that’s needed. For school-agers, challenge them to create a flow of poses with the pictures they cut out, and then try it together.

When all else fails and you simply need to get out of the house, come to a yoga class. Give the kids up to someone else for a little while where they can be loud and silly, put their feet on the walls and stand on their heads. Let a certified professional give you a break for an hour so you can re-group and breathe. And, in the off chance there isn’t a kid’s yoga class near you, there is an adult one. Yoga studios are EVERYWHERE. Find one that works for you and take your own class. Maybe it doesn’t solve the problem of entertaining the children, but after an hour or so of being in your own body, you’ll be recharged and ready to go. Movement is good. Just ask a toddler.