ekam inhale

Heaven

buffalo-yogi

Four days in bed with the flu, enough. I dressed myself in every layer of clothing I could find and headed outside where the sun was. It was cold in that invigorating, glad to be alive kind of way and the sound of snow crunching under my feet, well, there's nothing like it. I went to the park to say hello to the trees and see how the animals were doing.

The llamas were still there, fit to spit and probably thinking that the signage assuring me they were used to cold weather was total crap - they might be accustomed to cold weather and high altitudes but our winters are no Peruvian mountaintop. The peacocks and wallabies were long gone for warmer climates but my favourites, the buffalo, had held their ground.

As a kid I would fixate on a topic and read everything I could find on it until I'd exhausted the library and was forced to move on: vampires, the lost city of atlantis, redwinged blackbirds, bigfoot, buffalos. There was something about the sheer size of them, that they were friendly giants, that they roamed the entire length of Canada (wanderlust even then), that they survived the ice age, that they were social and friendly - they fascinated me.

I stood and communed with the big daddy buffalo for a while, enjoying the calmness around him, before realizing that that noise I heard was his breathing. Dude was ujayii breathing. Total yogi for sure...

scenes from a couch

Sick. Holy cow, so sick. Listening to 'Great Lake Swimmers' to remind me of my lake, wearing my brightest pink pants to make me happy, cuddled under my favourite blue blanket to keep me cozy, drinking the wonder drink because it's wonderful, reading books old and new to keep me company and ignoring the outside world from my cozy nest of sickness.













I'd planned to go out and take pictures of christmas lights tonight. I'm headed south soon and I'll miss the crazy chaos of twinkling lights against the snow but even pretty lights couldn't tempt me outside today. I'm willing myself to get better for tomorrow so I can practice with the teachers teacher before we both leave for our various trips, it will be months before I'll have the opportunity to learn from him again.

I've been thinking a lot about my practice. About dogma, about rigidity, about respecting tradition in a way that supports the beautiful, transformative experience the practice could be instead of the disempowering practice it also could be, about authorization, about teachers trusting their students and supporting students to trust themselves but I can't figure out how to do it in the most diplomatic way. I'm not interested in getting caught up in yoga politics. I am interested in getting on my mat and practicing.

Yoga politics aside, to be this happy, this content, this fully present is something amazing. This has been a transformative year in the most awesome way imaginable.

go coyote go

I always root for the coyotes. Maybe if they could write they'd counter with their own sign reminding us that it is we who are putting their community at risk...