#71 Run Everyday For A Month

Six months in, it is mid-July.

Six months to go, and I am already defeated.

Scroll back to 2008. Yearning for personal transformation and a healthier body, I embarked on a 40-day yoga challenge. I had been practicing yoga on and off for years, mostly at gyms and to DVDs in my living room, but I felt the need to change my practice, to find teachers, and to find myself. I was a little lost.

I hunted around on google for a yoga studio either near my house or my office. I was still fairly new to Los Angeles and didn't know anyone who practiced yoga, so it was just up to me and google to find a good place. I didn't know anything about style or teachers in the area. My requirements were location, class time, and price.

I found a sweet little independent studio called Rising Lotus Yoga in Sherman Oaks, and they had classes I could take right after work on my way home. Best of all, they had a "new student special" (still do) that allowed me to take unlimited classes for two weeks and not a lot of money. Since I didn't know if I would like it, that seemed perfect.

Once I had my studio, I settled in for 40 days and 40 nights. Well, 40 days. It was a number of change. It was a number of spiritual awakening. It was a number of transformation. It was the number for Noah, Moses, and Jesus. I figured if it worked for them, it could work for me. I also decided to take one day off a week. On the 7th day I rested. 

I should state here that I am not particularly religious. I was raised steeped in an area of Judaism that my brother calls Conservadox. Technically it was Conservative, but on the very conservative side. Things have lightened up in my family since then, but by that time that happened I had pretty much left the religion entirely (except for Passover Seders with friends and Hanukkah candles with the kids). However, this yoga challenge was a body/mind/spirit thing. I needed it on more levels than I consciously knew.

Forty days. Rest on every seventh.

Every day I laid out my mat in the back of the Rising Lotus studio room. I sweated through the poses. I felt like a fool in my shorts and tank tops. I wasn't toned like the others. I didn't know what I was doing. My mind chatter was loud. Who am I? Why did I think I could do this? This is too hard. And then, towards the end of class the teacher would instruct us to lay down on our backs, arms at our sides, palms face up. Close your eyes. Release management of your breath. Release management of your thoughts. 

After class, every single time, I floated out of the studio, peaceful, calm, beautiful, happy. I couldn't wait till the next day when I would lay out my mat again.

When the forty days ended, I continued. Six days a week. On the seventh day I rested. Each rest day I yearned to be back on my mat. And then on the day I came back, the mind chatter would start again. And then I would float home and return to the studio the next day.

This is what I was thinking when I decided to Run Everyday For A Month. I wanted to see what would happen. How I would change. How I would deal with the mind chatter. How my body would adjust to the daily demands.

Also, I wanted to prepare my body for #82 Hanson Marathon Training Method in which you train your body not to run 26 miles, but to run the last 16 miles of a marathon on tired legs. I enjoyed running my first full marathon in May so much that I have been looking forward to doing another - but this time with better training.

But I am already defeated.

I attempted my 30 days of running. I got to Day 8, when a difficult truth arose: Stop. I had been ignoring the pain in my ankle/foot, trying to "run through it", trying to discern if it was a real injury or just a mental block with physical manifestations. On Day 9 I realized it was a real injury that needs real time to heal.

Like many people, I find rejection and failure challenging to manage. The most difficult failure of all, though, is when I set my own personal goals and cannot meet them. I have doubts about my athletic prowess, and want to push myself past those doubts. I love disciplined practice -- I am a musician, a yogi, a writer, and now a runner. I love the meditation and focus that comes when I immerse myself in these activities. I find peace and self-worth in them. I love the challenge, and the accomplishment. Having to let go of my goal, give up, is one of the hardest things of all to do.

I suppose this is one of the lessons of The List. I can't do everything. Or, I can't do everything this year. Last year I had the same defeat. There were things I couldn't do last year. The item that was the hardest of all to let go was #100 Run From Our House To The Beach.

So perhaps this is where the silver lining comes in. I wasn't able to do #100 in 2012, but I did do it on April 27 this year. Perhaps because it took more time, more healing, more training, it was even more significant. There are other things, too, that I didn't get to last year that I have been able to do this year. Like #54 Take a Pottery Class. That one became this year's #45 Take a Pottery Class with Em, which we did on March 23.

So, letting go. Another lesson of the list. It feels like a bitter one right now, but perhaps it will be even sweeter later on?

We shall see.

My Secret List, and The Happiness Project

On my secret list, a list I have never written down but is a sort of personal blogging Code of Honor, is the rule "never make excuses". So therefore, never mind the gap in posts and let us just continue where we left off, shall we?

A few months ago, a friend texted my sweetheart to say that he was overseeing an estate sale for a woman who had decided that she was done with Southern Cali and was headed to upstate New York with all her horses, material goods, and life. Having grown up in the northeast, I can understand the draw to upstate NY. In many places and at many times, it is picture-postcard beautiful. There's a built-in roughness, too, to that region, one that forces you to dress appropriately regardless of fashion, chop wood out of necessity, worry about your tires from November to May, grow anxious about the coming winter in September and October, and rejoice in deep-seated celebration at March's first sight of crocuses and daffodils. There is nothing happier than true springtime when you have suffered through a long winter. After the last April surprise snows have melted and the rain in May has moved on, June is glorious, glorious, glorious. Of course, then comes September's gorgeous autumn amid growing anxiety about the coming winter. 

Although I've never lived in upstate New York, I know these feelings well. Massachusetts is upstate New York's next door neighbor, and I spent more than ten years trading cups of sugar and nor'easters with The Empire State. 

I have wondered, since moving to the endless sunshine of SoCal, if the bitter northeast winters are not worth it. After all, here we never have deep lows that come from dark, cold months, but that means we are never sent soaring into the giddiness of Spring Fever. Here in Los Angeles we have the steady state of "pretty happy" most of the time. Even keel. Steady Freddy. I love SoCal, and it's a relief to wake up in February to blue skies rather than darkness, but now in my sixth year here, I appreciate more than ever that amazing je-ne-sais-quoi that occurs with the fierce arc of a swinging seasonal pendulum. 

Well, in any case, this woman was leaving, and her estate sale was over. She'd sold all she could, and the next day she was heading eastbound. Our friend texted my sweetheart to invite us over and take what we wanted of whatever was left. I found the book of haikus in her boxes of tossed books, and I also stumbled upon a book called The Happiness Project.

image taken from http://successforsolopreneurs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/happiness-project.jpg

Months and months have passed since that estate sale. The Happiness Project took a while to rise to the top of the pile of reading I always have on my nightstand, wedged between the nightstand and the wall, and squeezed into the living room bookcase. Between it and me was Grammar Lessons (highly recommend!), Tenth of December (ditto!), another reading of Wild (this time for a writing class, with an eye to craft and construction), tons of classmates essays (for said class, and the one prior), and issues of The Sun and Poets and Writers . There is so much to read in this lifetime and I'm trying to get it all in. 

This week I finally cracked open The Happiness Project and am finding over and over that it reminds me of this List. The author, Gretchen Rubin, started a blog when she began her project, which reminded me of this blog that I created about halfway through my first year's List. Gretchen committed to posting regularly about her project. The best bloggers do - and by regularly, I mean at least once a week, but better every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or something like that. Reading of her commitment to her blog and her follow through, I thought, I am a blogging failure. I am not cut out for blogging. Or maybe I rebelliously thought, I am too busy to get boxed in to another regularly scheduled thing. I have a ton of discipline for running, yoga practice, and writing in general, but regular blog posting has thus far escaped me. 

Never make excuses. 

Okay, I won't. However, I will say this: The List of 100 Things has profoundly affected my life, and I think the reason I don't write about it more often is because it's not always clear to me how it is affecting me, I just know that it is. I do the things on my List and take it all in on a semi-subconscious level. From the beginning I'd been aware on some level of the profundity that would come along with working through the List. I knew that I would change, grow, and in fact I started the List because I wanted to transform in some way. But, also, I embarked on The List in 2012 just to get stuff done. Get stuff done in my own little private life, change quietly, without a blog, alone.

There's a story my mom told me about when I was a little girl. 

As the story goes, I was still a baby in a crib, and learning to stand. Like most babies, I would pull myself up by the sides of the crib and rejoice in my accomplishment. But, as my mother has told me, I practiced only in private. My parents watched me through the crack in the door as I pulled myself up, stand, maybe dance a little, my fat little legs celebrating their new-found strength. And then, as soon as I was aware of my audience, I sat down. I wouldn't perform my new trick for anyone until I was solid in my new skill.

I haven't changed much in this regard. Perhaps it is my introverted nature. Perhaps I just like to stay focused without the distraction of others, with full concentration on the task at hand, without worrying about an audience. At some point I realized that nature was limiting. There is no way to take, for instance, yoga classes and not have any one see you. Or swim lessons. Or long distance running. And without readers, there is no way to really become a better writer. Although I have set aside this nature so that I can learn and grow, in many ways I still prefer to master new tricks in my own private room. 

And sometimes, as in my excavation of how The List is effecting my life, perhaps I would just prefer to take the easy road. Not even write about it at all. 

But The Happiness Project reminded me this week that this blog's purpose is partly for processing. A platform to write about the affect of the List. A place to write through the questions, perhaps, as Rilke says, write my way to some answers.

Unlike The Happiness Project, I didn't start out with categories in mind. Gretchen Rubin started her project from the jumping off point of categories. She examined aspects of her life, and filled her year-long project with exercises that would, in theory, increase her personal happiness. In my List writing, I just allowed my pen to write. Much later, as I worked through it, I realized there were general categories that items generally fell into: Self-care. Learning/growth. Family. Challenging Fun. Laid-back Fun. Adventure. Things like that.  

I can't give a book review at this time since I'm only about halfway through, but this book/project does ring a familiar tone to The List. I didn't begin this List project with an eye to increasing my own happiness, but I did begin it with an eye to growing more into myself and the life that I want to live.

Which, I suppose, is a happy life. 

#57 Try a New Thing

When I wrote #57, I had no idea what it could possibly be. But, they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. They also say something about lemons and lemonade. I say, when running gives you injuries, take to the pool.

Now, swimming is seriously out of my comfort zone. There are so many aspects of swimming that concern me: first, there's the breathing issue.

Many, many years ago (we're talking 7th grade) I had a summer of asthma attacks. They started with an upper respiratory infection of some sort that I got at summer camp and were exacerbated by some environmental allergen (tree pollen?) in the upstate New York and Quebec Provence air that summer. The deep coughing fits that marred the end of my summer camp stay were followed by intensely frightening asthma wheezing attacks during my family's Canadian vacation. I still remember the panic of gasping for air, trying to take it in and my lungs just not responding to my desperate need. And then, just as quickly as the whole asthma trouble began, it left. By the next summer I was fine.

Except when I went swimming.

For years I retained no trace of asthma except when I over-exerted myself in the water. I took to floating, to sunbathing, to bobbing up and down, but I would not swim. If I ever felt out of breath in the water, panic set in. So I kept myself calm. For twenty-five years.

Which leads to the second swimming concern: swimming.

Since I have made concerted efforts through the years to stay calm, to not swim, to not over-exert myself in water, I cannot swim. I mean, I don't drown, but I just don't swim. Technically, I know *how*. After all, from the time I was itty bitty until 7th grade, I had camp swim lessons. But for the past twenty-five years I have. not. swum. I just don't do it.

And of course the third swimming concern: bathing suit.

Since I don't swim, I don't have a swim suit. Oh, sure, I have a few of what might be listed in catalogs as "bathing suits" but these two-piece things are not actually meant for moving. They are meant to even out a tan, to stay respectable in a hotel hot tub, and take the kids to the beach. In my pre-kid life, back when I was a freedom loving hippie living at a dance and music retreat on the south shore of Massachusetts, I didn't care about suits at all. Back then the only thing I and the rest of the crew brought into the water was a beer, or a trombone, or flowers for our hair.

But injury calls for courage. Conquering of fears. Dipping feet in the water.

Los Angeles Valley College, as it turns out, is only a few miles from my house and my office. There are open lap hours conveniently set up in the evening, just when I leave work, and also on the weekends. And it's cheap! $45 for a 10-use pass during open lap hours. One day I decided to don my sports bra and bikini bottoms and splash in.

Goggles, as it turns out, are recommended.

Swimming, my friends, is not easy. Each time I got to the end of the lane (25 meters), I had to rest and catch my breath. I had to work hard to keep my eyes clear (didn't yet have goggles) and get from one end to the other. Each time I did, it took a full 5 minutes to breath easy again. And then I'd head back.

Now I have goggles, though still no official suit. My hair is dry from the chlorine. I need that most fashionable of hats, a swim cap. But, this past Sunday I enrolled in swim lessons. I've gone to the pool three times this week and already feel myself getting stronger. I still have to stop every 25 meters, sometimes sooner, but it's more because now I am focusing intensely on form.

It's a relief to walk away after an hour of exertion and not feel pain in my foot. It's also a relief to have an exercise to replace running and spin for a while. Moving my body has become an essential need for my personal happiness. It feels good to confront this long standing fear of water - I can feel it melting away. I'm actually looking forward to going to the pool. Yesterday it was the highlight of my day. Each stroke takes enormous concentration, but I am also trying to bask in the eerie silence as my head ducks below the surface between each breath.

And there is the beauty. I wasn't expecting it. In the evening, the golden setting sun illuminates the pool and the other swimmers in a magical way, water spraying into the air with each kick, the flags above the lanes swaying softly in the air. I might be falling a little bit in love.

#66: Write Haikus

found this little treasure in a free box of books at an estate sale last Fall

#1
Dreams and desires
The list of a hundred things
Contours of a year

#2
Boss arrival bets
Office listens. She's achieved
4 hour work week.

#3
If I am ever
Untethered from a day job
Wednesdays are beach days.

#4
Easily seduced
Estate sale throwaways
A trip through haiku

#5
Beguiling words
A box of musty old books
Seductive perfume

#6
Office wide meeting
Hummus and pita to come
No minds on matter at hand

#7
10:47
to some might be considered
a late arrival.

#8
Missed margs on Friday.
Waffles and berry compote,
Saturday healing.

#9
Trust where the ache leads
For the waffle iron warms
The belly and heart.

#10
Inspiration comes
Even in the office world
For little poems. 

#7 Create Running Blog

No pun intended, this year has gotten off at a fast pace. It astounds me to realize that I only got back to the day-job office a week ago. It's been such a packed week that it feels like at least a month since Darby, the girls and I went over to a friend's house for a chillaxed New Years Day.

That day everyone piled into the living room and curled up in blankets to watch a movie while I popped popcorn over the stove. I missed the first part of ParaNorman while I was in the kitchen, and once I was done it seemed strange to pop in mid-story. In other words, it played out perfectly. Every year since high school I've taken some time on the first of the year to write in my journal. I listened to the laughing in the other room as I brought my own bowl of popcorn (doused with hot sauce) into the quiet dining room. I opened up my new Moleskin journal. Of course I skipped the first 3 pages - I could feel a list coming on.

Without missing a downbeat, by the end of the next day I'd already completed a few of the items. Since last January, running and writing have become major parts of my life. I'm in between writing classes at the moment -- the next one starts on Jan 23 -- and although there are some essays that I want to revise, in the downtime I've been fishing for some...  je ne sais quoi. My running schedule also lagged a little during the holidays, and since they both seem to feed into each other, I decided to create a running blog for inspiration, and later, a place to look back and review my progress.

#7 Create Running Blog

Done.

The main reason for the blog is that running is complicated. Or, rather, not complicated, but for me it's definitely multi-faceted. It's healed me in some ways, and it's shined a light into some corners of my spirit that I hadn't realized were there. I figured it might be interesting to both track my runs and to have a specified place in which to write about my thoughts on / while running.

So here it is - The Written Run -  http://thewrittenrun.blogspot.com. 

Last Year's Journey: The List of 2012

I didn't want to post the 2012 List while I was still working on it. I felt vulnerable, and wasn't sure how it would all go. As it turns out, I revised it several times in the early months. Later I want to explore what was going on with the revising, but not now. For now, I think it's just the right time to unveil the list in its final form. It's still fresh on my mind, and the 2013 list is just a little zygote. So, without further delay.... 


The List of 100 Things To Do in 2012

1.  go back to Big Sur with Darby
2. meditate on 3rd chakra - yellow, strength, power, belly
3. play more music
4. plant herbs & veggies in backyard
5. show more love to Darby
6. go to a show at McCabe's 
7. write a song
8. book 3 yoga retreats for Love Them Apples
9. temper sarcasm with the kidlets
10. plant pumpkins (July)
11. plant watermelons (May) 
12. open LTA credit union account
13. make origami lanterns for bedroom
14. take a cake decorating class with Darby
15. make a cake with vegan fondant
16. finish painting the bedroom
17. cultivate inner peace
18. donate to KPCC
19. nuture jad plants
20. finish writing 100 things list
21. make (----ssshhh... it's a secret!) for Darby (done! 2013)
22. cultivate meditation practice
23. write at least 12 Love Them Apples blog posts
24. make valentine's cookies for the kirtan band
25. write morning pages - at least twice a week
26. listen to the birds
27. take a rainy day off from work
28. get new running shoes
29. run for 25 minutes straight
30. run for 30 minutes straight
31. run for 35 minutes straight
32. run for 40 minutes straight
33. run a race
34. hand origami birds in girls' room
35. buy cute underwear
36. buy new yoga clothes
37. downhill ski
38. cross country ski
39. do not say anything negative about anyone for a day... a week.... 
40. paint a painting (done! 2013)
41. doodle, sketch, draw
42. learn Em's math lessons
43. donate old clothes
44. darn socks
45. get clothes tailored
46. repair leaf necklace
47. make a vegan coconut cream pie
48. paint dining room
49. take a camping trip with Darby and the girls
50. clean out garage
51. plant garden behind garage
52. spring clean the house (any time of year) (done! 2013)
53. get a new comforter for us
54. take a pottery class(done! 2013)
55. see cirque de soleil
56. get prints of the four of us framed
57. spend a lazy day at the beach
58. go to a craft show
59. make a new yoga playlist
60. revise creative yogi proposal
61. send creative yogi proposal to Claire
62. see a show at the Greek or the Bowl
63. get biga (bread starter) started     
64. make hard cashew cheese
65. commit to fitness - 6 months
66. focus on guitar - 1 month
67. focus on clarinet - 1 month
68. focus on harmonium - 1 month 
69. make babka
70. revise Odessa (story) 
71. relearn Odessa (song)
72. send Odessa (story) out for publication
73. get 10 rejections for Odessa (story)
74. back up hard drive
75. draw with crayons
76. get a journal without lines (finish other first)
77. have a drink with Pookie McNoodles(done! 2013)
78. go to Texas
79. make granola
80. Arclight date night with Darby
81. have a heels & fancy date night with Darby
82. get new lens for camera
83. get compost started
84. paddleboard
85. go away for a week with Darby
86. search for blue seaglass
87. record songs
88. go trail riding with the girls
89. transfer Love Them Apples blog to custom website
90. record Odessa
91. go to eye doctor
92. hang swing in the backyard
93. teach Creative yogi workshop (Unlocking The Creative Flow)
94. re-read Le Petit Prince (in French)
95. do lynda.com tutorial on photography
96. do lynda.com tutorial on audio recording
97. start using only 1 paper towel to dry hands
98. embark on a new writing project
99. go to a taping of The Ellen Show
100. run from our home to the beach  (done! 2013)            

#4 Teach Creative Flow Workshop

poster for Unlocking the Creative Flow - #4 on the list for 2013

I moved to Los Angeles six years ago with a silenced voice and a broken spirit. I was married at the time, to the drummer in my band, and we'd been on the road touring full time for about six months. There was no planned end for the tour, and until a few weeks earlier, no plan to settle in California. There had been no plan to settle at all, actually. We just booked gigs and drove around the country with our bass player, sleeping in relative's spare rooms, stranger's lumpy couches, and on rock club floors. Every day we drove into a different town, every night we drank beer, and every morning we drove off.

It's strange to talk about a music tour and realize that my prominent memories have nothing to do with music. My then-husband and I had spent the money we got from our wedding gifts to buy a van that we rigged to run on recycled vegetable oil. Just before our first anniversary we found a new bass player (our original beloved one had no interest in hitting the road) and the three of us loaded the van with all our most prized possessions - drums, guitars, amplifiers, microphones. We drove out of Boston in the Spring of '06 with an extended Chevy cargo van full of songs and dreams. 

I grew up going to folk festivals. All my heroes were singers and road warriors. I'd dreamed of touring for as long as I'd been writing songs. Since my first east coast road trip from college back home, I'd wanted to see the country. My drumming husband and I met at Berklee College of Music where we both did graduate work, and then gave up our jobs and apartments to live out our rock star dreams.

Right from the start I felt ungrounded. Despite the good attendance of our shows at the beginning of the tour, as we made our way down the eastern seaboard I had a sinking feeling. Not sinking, actually. More like drowning. Locked in the van for hours on end, I lost all sense of schedule. Always surrounded by people, I misplaced all sense of creativity. I filled my days with numbers and papers instead of poetry and melody. I sent business emails and phone calls to bookers and promoters, and counted the cash at the end of the night. The unfamiliarity of each new town made me too anxious to venture far from the van. The only exercise I got was the heavy-lifting of sound equipment at the beginning and end of each night. The only time I sang was for the hour or two of the gig. The rest of my days were silent.

By the time we got to Los Angeles, it was just the two of us. I'd started having emotional breakdowns on stage, crying at lyrics I'd sung for years, alternately self-medicating with coca-cola and gin-and-tonics. One night in New Hope, PA the tourist season had ended and the club was near-empty. We played the opening bars to our first song and my throat choked. I cried so hard I couldn't sing. We dropped the bass player in Virginia with his folks, and pointed the van west. I didn't care where we went - I'd go anywhere my husband chose, as long as I never had to sing again. He picked L.A, and to this day I believe this was one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me.

Almost a year into our lives as Californians, a woman I worked with but barely knew gave me a flyer for a 12-week workshop based on the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I didn't know anything about the book or the workshop, but I instinctively knew that this was what I needed for some deep healing of my creative spirit. I hadn't sung in over a year, hadn't played guitar, hadn't written a song. I was working long hours in the celebrity endorsements department at a top talent agency, lost and trying desperately to find a new dream, a new career.

The Artist's Way workshop that winter was a spirit-saver. I drank up the weekly meetings like I'd been parched. I was parched - desperately thirsty to be around artists of any sort, deeply needing to tap back into my own creative depths. Those twelve weeks helped me begin stitching my creative spirit back together. After the twelve weeks were over, I took some more workshops with facilitator Kelly Morgan, the inspiring woman who I began to consider my mentor. Soon, I became Kelly's assistant in the workshops, meeting weekly at her home with a small group of other assistants, and helping to hold the space for new Artist Way students' healing.

Ultimately the workshop helped me to unveil other desires. I found my longing to regain body-wellness during those workshops and in my weekly one-hour "artist dates" that the book prescribed. I remembered my love of yoga, and found Rising Lotus Yoga, a beautiful studio near where I worked.  That summer I delved deeply into my yoga practice in a personal 40-day challenge in which I practiced every day (resting every 7th day). It was the discipline and surrender that I needed, inspired by Boston yoga teacher Baron Baptiste and the transformational journeys of biblical teachers. Later that year I enrolled in the Rising Lotus Yoga teacher training program, and spent the next nine months studying yoga and unraveling my marriage. Whatever is no longer serving us, the yoga practice teaches us, begins to fall away. I felt renewed, like a phoenix rising from the ash, like a lotus growing out of the muck.

In the years since those Artist Way workshops with Kelly and my yoga teacher training at Rising Lotus, I re-found my voice. I remembered my love of writing. I discovered that I love teaching. I learned to nourish myself with good food made well. I would be remiss to not mention the love that has come into my life through my dear man Darby and his beautiful daughters.

Songwriter Patty Griffin has a line in her song Love Throws A Line: "We run out of luck / We run out of days / We run out of gas a hundred miles away from a station.... Just before we can't go any further / Love throws a line to you and me". The Artist's Way, Kelly, Rising Lotus, yoga, California.... they all threw me a line, a life saver when I was drowning in the muck of dreams that were no longer sustaining me.

Last year, when I began The List of 100 Things, I included two lines about a vision I had:

#60 - revise creative yogi proposal

#61 - send creative yogi proposal to Rising Lotus

Inspired by all these things and wanting to share the healing, I've created a one-day workshop for the yoga community of creative spirits. There are so many students I have met at yoga studios and in classes who chat with me later about their screenplays, their books, their music, dance, films, paintings. Finally, because of last year's List of 100 Things, I created this workshop. I sent the proposal to Rising Lotus sometime in 2012 and they loved it. We booked a date right at the beginning of 2013 because since it seemed the perfect time to fan the flames of the new year's creations.... and now the workshop is coming up.

That I created this workshop (step one!) and moved past my fear of rejection (step two!) were major accomplishments from my List last year. On January 13 I'll check off item #4 on my List for 2013:

#4 - Teacher Creative Flow workshop

Here's a link to the event, if you are in Los Angeles and interested in attending. There's early bird pricing - only $35 for the 3-hour workshop. We'll do a mixed level yoga practice (appropriate for all levels) to start and then move into writing and interactive exercises. I already know some of the folks who have signed up for this, and I'm looking forward to us all inspiring each other as we uncover, discover, and tap more deeply into our creative spirits.

Here's the blurb from the poster about the workshop:

In this 3-hour workshop we will embark on a hero’s journey –

because we are all the heroes of our own story – and unleash the creative flow through movement of the body and the pen. We will tap creative inspiration and loosen the grip of hesitancy and fears by releasing the blocks of our past stories.

This workshop will begin with a 1-hour yoga practice. We’ll     focus on breath, movement, and sweat to quiet the surface thoughts and find our inner strength, balance and joy.

Following the asana, we will move into writing practice, playful sensory explorations, and small- and large-group interactive   exercises to spark, inspire, and unlock the creative flow.

Sunday

January 13, 2013

12:30—3:30pm

 $35 adv / $40 day of

This workshop is open to all levels of yoga practice.

All types of creative spirits are welcome — actors, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers, painters, cooks, parents, teachers…

Bring your journal, a pen, and your curiosity.


Rising Lotus Yoga 13557 Ventura Blvd. Sherman Oaks 818-990-0282 • risinglotusyoga.comm

 

xoxo, A