Coming back to stillness.  That is what it all about.

We unrolled our mats.  For many of the people in the room it was the first time they had done so all summer, others had kept their practice up; different for everyone.  Tall seat, eyes closed, tuning in to the inner self, the breath, being still.  The summer with its beauty keeps us on the run, as we try to leverage the bounty of the season. And getting kids settled into school can feel like it’s as much a new start for us as it is them.  So sitting quietly is a welcome respite from all the movement, planning, details of our lives.  As we come out of doing and into being.  Welcoming ourselves back home to ourselves, and to our mats.

Hurricane season is in full force.  So many storms are creating fear, fleeing, devastation.  So much chaos and energy.  As I look at the radar images of the swirl of the storms I am reminded of the swirls of our minds.  All the details and engagement in our lives can create our own mental swirl.  Sprinkle in a little stress or anxiety and who knows what category storm you have!

So you sit, you breathe, and you quiet the winds of the mind.  It’s the foundational element of your practice, both on and off the mat.

No wind.  I walk like a sleuth out to the end of the dock and roll out my mat.  I get myself settled into a sitting position and briefly close my eyes.  Opening a moment later just to soak it all in.  The beauty is breathtaking.  Tall pines surround me at the edge the lake. It feels as if I have just sat down in a quiet, still cathedral.  Giant inhale, even bigger exhale.  Blessings being counted, feeling lucky to be here.

And so the day began, with my daily “dock yoga” as I call it.  People often ask me what my personal practice is like, so I thought I would share a glimpse into my practice while on my respite in Maine.

Back to closed eyes, centered breathing.  The water is so still that you can hear fish jump nearby and a loon calls to break the silence.  Must be time to move on to some gentle warm ups.  A little cat/cow, some lunging, twisting, longer held planks, and of course, downward dog.  Right leg wrapping around left–is this even yoga? I think to myself–well it feels good and I’m finding areas that are stuck–and I float into a side plank.  As my arm reaches high I feel like one with the trees, reaching tall, strong, yet bending, moving.

As I progress through the practice I am reminded of the days as a young child when I would visit my grandparents in the Bronx.  We play hide & go seek with our cousins in their basement, hiding in cupboards, under tables, anywhere.  On the mat I might suddenly find a spot–found ya–and hold it for longer, explore it, wiggle into something that feels like the perfect key to what is locked.  It’s an untamed, not always symmetrically balanced, practice that is my own exploration, a hide & go seek for my body.  And as my body is different every day, so is the practice.

In the quiet of the practice I find myself grieving the loss of my father.  I see the loon coming closer and think, “Dad, is that you?”  I feel tears trickle down my face.  Wiping them off, I carry on, “come back the breath” I tell myself, and I gently nudge myself back.  Moving through the emotions is part of the practice, so I embrace this as a sacred moment, a hide & go seek all its own.

After a few warriors of various types, I find myself in a wide-legged fold.  The world is upside down.  The lake is so calm that the reflection of the trees looks, from this angle, that it isn’t upside down at all.  Which one is real and which is not? Another game to explore…

Down to the mat for some deep hip and core work.  The intensity keeps me firmly planted in my body and I welcome the brief svasana I give myself.

Mind, body, spirit.  The practice never ceases to deliver, and on some magical days on the dock, even more so.

I’m on vacation this week, enjoying some wonderful lakeside R&R in Maine.  A beautiful spot not only for its physical beauty but its annual reminder to live more simply and in tune with nature.

I said good-bye to the folks in my yoga classes last week as I will not be teaching again until September.  It’s bittersweet, as it is my passion to share the mind/body/spiritual elements of the practice.  But this is my annual dive inward–practicing on a dock or a deck each day–just being, not doing a whole lot.  However, I will especially miss teaching during eclipse week in late August–which is kind of a big deal–likely the last full eclipse of the sun in my lifetime.  And I just cannot get Carly Simon’s lyrics from “You’re So Vain” out of my head when I write that (…then you flew your Lear jet up to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun…).

I asked my classes last week in a “moon themed” class to imagine themselves, their shining gifts, their offering to this world, their pure radiance, as the light of the sun.  So beautiful, bright and stunning.  Now imagine the moon fully darkening that light as it would in an eclipse.  Doesn’t feel that good, does it?  And yet, this is our lives….we let so much get in the way of shining our brightest.

Maybe it is a lens–the lens of your life–that needs cleaning.  Seeing things a bit differently may be what is necessary.  Maybe it is a story that you’ve been holding onto, or something–anything–that isn’t serving you any longer.  Time to let it go and shift perspective.  Celebrate the eclipse by giving yourself permission to radiate to your fullest potential.

Remember, the actual eclipse is fleeting and the sun comes out the other side.

I was out running this past weekend.  Okay, it was really part walk/part run.  But I was running when I tripped on a lip at an intersection and went flying forward, landing pretty hard.  I took me a minute to assess what was what.  I seemed to be bleeding a lot from one of my knees and one hand, but was able to get to the side of the road and determine nothing was broken.  I was mostly stunned and feeling sorry for myself.  So I began walking home, when I bumped into a friend.

This friend was very sympathetic and said that she, too, had fallen while walking about a year ago.  At the time she said to herself, “If I were doing yoga I wouldn’t have fallen, I would have had better balance,” adding, “but here you are, doing all this yoga, and you fell!” (was she justifying not doing yoga? unclear!)  The encounter was brief and as I was in need of fresh water to clean up, I carried on toward home.

Throughout the day I reflected on the fall: pretty symmetrical, even distribution of weight, didn’t break anything; it could have been so much worse.  But thinking about the comment from my friend just made me realize how important yoga is on every level.  Maybe the practice has given me the strength and balance so that I didn’t fall worse than I did!  I am sure that is true.  But on a deeper level, maybe all the lessons from the practice will help me recover more quickly–because that is what the practice does–it allows you to right the ship and navigate to calmer waters more easily.

Is it the resilience that is required in balances? The strength built in warriors? The humor we employ when we fall out of a pose? The compassion we cultivate for ourselves and others? Or the lessons from the poses themselves: twists allowing us to be experiences opposites not unlike the joy and sorrow of life? backbends allowing us to become open-hearted yet with strong backbones, reminding us we can feel vulnerable yet be strong.  I could go on and on.

The point is….we all tumble and fall sometimes.  You might have an actual fall (which I sincerely hope that you do not!).  Or the tumbling might be more subtle, falling on an emotional or spiritual level.  We all have fallen this way.  Just remember a yoga practice will help you recover and get back on course, no matter the bumps and bruises you take along the way.

My husband has a shirt we purchased at a brewery in Freeport, Maine.  On the front it says “Maine Beer Company” and on the back it says “Do the right thing.”  It’s so appealing to do the right thing, but what is right?  For each of us the answer is different.  What is right for you aligns with your spirit, feels good to your bones.

Last week I spent some time, energy and resources to help a friend in need.  That felt SO GOOD.  Giving and sharing are always in alignment for me (as they are for most of us), which is probably one of the many reasons I teach.  Before I knew it I had spent a couple of hours trying to help my friend.  Everyone has a place where time evaporates and you’ve gotten lost in something.  It’s there where you’ve found something that is completely in the flow or alignment for yourself.  Stay aware of those moments, they are like a guiding North star.

I was at a yogathon on Sunday, with 1,000 people practicing yoga all day at Gillette stadium, raising money for Boston Children’s Hospital and Seane Corn’s Off The Mat program.  Seane Corn was there, and summed up what I am trying to say here so perfectly, “Beauty is living in harmony with your truth.”

Diving a bit deeper I would add that every choice we make adds up, until you reflect and you see that you are a compilation of the choices you’ve made.  Some we take very seriously, others we may make over a beer, but there remains a powerful opportunity to shape the course of your life and to keep it in alignment with your own truth, your own spirit, with every choice you make.

Deepak Chopra says, “To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul.  To do this you need to experience solitude, which people are afraid of, because in silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.”  I believe this is why a regular yoga practice is so powerful.  It gives you the opportunity to quiet the chatter of the brain, to slow down and quiet down.  Yoga is a meditation in motion and as such gives you the time to do the inner work–to listen in the silence.

This week we worked on our alignment physically, but as always, the practice is a mind, body, spirit practice.  So, yes, while we focused on finding the mountain pose in every pose, we also looked at aligning with our values and our true self.

Peace.

It’s all about seva, or service.  Our yoga practice stirs in us the need to help others through the full body prayer that is our practice.  I have had so much fun doing benefit classes to help the Milton Residents Fund and Saint Rock Haiti Foundation in the past few months.  April provides another great opportunity.

This coming Good Friday, April 14th,  I didn’t have any classes scheduled (I figured some people might be away and others might be managing life at home with the kids out of school that day).  I’ve decided to hold a benefit class that day–I am dubbing “Do Good Friday”–we’ll practice and raise money for Boston Children’s Hospital as part of the Yoga Reaches Out effort underway in April.  The class will be from 8 -9:15 a.m. I can’t wait!

If you are interested in donating to the cause, here is the link to my fundraising page:
http://yogathon.yogareachesout.org/goto/FranKaroff

Thank you for considering a donation to amp up the funds raised on “Do Good Friday!!”

Last week my family and I traveled to Utah to ski.  It was my first time ever skiing out west and it was quite spectacular to be in the mountains, the vistas were magical.  I’ve gotten very disenchanted with skiing over the years with what I was sure was my declining ability.  This trip for me was really more about being together as a family, as one of our boys was home from college on spring break.

Day 1:  We made it to the mountain, and not surprisingly for me the first couple of runs were bad, with less control and more fear and tension than I could bear.  So when lunchtime finally came I called it quits.  While everyone went back out to ski, I brought my 15-year old rusty skis to be sharpened and waxed (I got yelled out by the technician!), and learned that my trusty old ski boots were a full size too big (!).   No wonder skiing felt like I was trying to grab molasses.  You must know what happened next:  I bought a new pair of boots to go with my sharpened skis.  I needed to know if the trouble was me or my equipment and it seemed right to figure it out on the first day of the mini ski vacation.

Day 2: Opposite day.  It was a dream.  After over a decade of being the slowest most cautious person (and scared!) on the trail, I found myself moving with confidence and at a good clip.  It was like all the mental lessons that I had been holding onto finally clicked.  The kids and my husband were shocked, tossing me nicknames like “ski queen” and “ski mamma.”   Mid way down on the first run one of them even said, “Wow.  You can really ski!”

For years and years and years I had been in the ski game purely to be with my family, not because I loved the sport.  And as the kids grew, it was a prime opportunity to be with them in an unplugged way and connect doing something in the great outdoors.  But now things had changed.  It wasn’t a terrifying adventure each time I got off the chairlift.  It was actually fun.  I was at ease, finally enjoying skiing.

At one point along the way, I spotted a sign, “Go With The Flow.”  Oh, indeed.

And this image below is not me, just a skier in dancer pose for your enjoyment 😉