There’s Beauty in the Breakdown// The Yoga of Travel

Oh dearest stars,
I have missed you.

My family and I have landed safely in our nest in Portland after a month of travel through Southeast Asia. We are trying to be patient as our bodies reconnect with the appropriate time-zone (2am wake-ups are brutal!).

We are filled to the brim with the sights, sounds and smells from another part of this beautiful planet. We have soaked up Southern Hemisphere sunrises and complete lunar eclipses. We have shared stories, laughter and tears with people with whom we shared not a single word. We have made offerings of every kind to everything we hold dear.

It feels good to be home. Travel has a way of distilling gratitude to its purest, most essential forms. I find myself really tasting the water I am lucky enough to drink straight from the tap. It is delicious. I taste it like a wine-lover does a fine burgundy or some-such. The minerals: I can almost feel them restoring my body.

I believe I have mentioned this before, but traveling is one of my great loves. To watch the way the light hits the sky in another part of the world is breath-taking. Exploring, learning, connecting: these are my motivations for skipping across time zones and water-taxing to far-flung archipelagos. It is, however, a complicated relationship. Life on the road can be difficult, and this trip stretched me in every way possible. I relied so much on my practice to locate (with varying degrees of success) strength and grace in the face of danger, illness and simple annoyance.

So what does practice look like while on a month-long sojourn with a partner and a three year-old? Sometimes it looks as one might expect: postures and seated meditation and the like. But the places where I found myself most grateful for practice were when practice was more subtle: satya–speaking truth when I was out-of-my mind with fear (huge waves, tiny boat… get me out of here); bhakti– absolute devotion to my family as I watched with love how they negotiated new circumstances; mantra– singing Wilco lyrics to restore calm while we were crazy with fever and infection.

As I’m always saying in class, yoga is so much more than “mastering” poses. Yoga is mastering challenging situations, and mastery might not always look like you think it “should”.

For all of those lessons and more that are bound to occur to be as the fog of jet lag lifts and the balm of integration spreads itself around, I am thankful.

LOVE to you all.

p.s. sweet darlings, in addition to all of my regularly-scheduled classes, I have a NEW CLASS starting November 5. It’s called WHOLE YOGA: the other 7-limbs. A practice-based study of the yoga beyond poses. The class is from 9-10am at 4940 NE 16th Avenue (the small People’s Yoga studio off of Alberta), $10 cash drop-in or $70 for an 8-class pass cash, check, or paypal. Email me if you have questions: sunroseyoga@gmail.com. XO! This class will be available ONLINE for those of you who are interested. Email me. LOVE.