08/02/2021
I know that this isn’t the first time you have heard someone say that this last year has been hard. Hard in ways we never imagined possible. The pandemic has challenged so many of our basic primal needs - safety & security at home, livelihood, and bodily health and vitality to name a few.
When lockdown began it was easy for me to fall into a cocoon of practice. My schedule revolved around daily asana, meditation and breathwork. At that point I was still teaching online yoga classes and the desire to show up in a grounded way for my students fueled me. Exercise and getting out into nature were prioritized. Every day consisted of nourishing, whole foods cooked with love from scratch.
And then the decision came to move away from the Hudson Valley. Since so much of our lives had already been uprooted, it made sense to rebuild those roots in the place of our dreams. When packing up and moving became my focus, those practices that ground me fell by the wayside.
This undoing took time. It was sneaky and insidious. Without a regular routine it was easy to leave practice out. Easy to ignore the tools I KNOW I need to manage my anxiety. Easy to find ANYTHING else to do to keep me from feeling, from really being with the pain and grief of all that had been lost. Eventually it led me to a place of poor health I haven’t known in years. (more on that another time)
I turned my full attention to getting to Colorado. Plotting our route, packing, and planning every aspect of our month long adventure visiting friends and family became my sole obsession. It kept me busy enough (read: distracted enough) to carry on putting one foot in front of the other.
Now I am slowly coming back to myself, coming back to practice. We are settled, we are safe, we have enough. In those ways we are so blessed, and I am so grateful. So much is still uncertain, and I am learning to be ok with that. I am constantly reminding myself to take it breath by breath, day by day.