Relocation, Resistance, Acceptance.
As I get older, it often feels as if life moves faster than ever, but I'm not sure I agree. Life can move more slowly, when I pay attention. Paying attention then becomes a form of love, listening, and even reverence to myself and others. I even believe time can be altered by allowing it to pass with mindful curiosity instead of scarcity or through resistance.
If I pay close attention, I usually know if and when, intuitively, I am ready for those monumental changes in life and can embrace them rather than thwart them. The biggest shift happens when I begin to recognize and remove the unnecessary and attend to what I value most. By allowing, it weaves itself into the most profound part of my life's story. It moves from being a tool to cope to a part of the process of daily life. Mindfulness, like breathing or Yoga, then becomes both conscious (how I act) and unconscious (how I react under stress) with practice.
These past few months, I have been able to put the practice of paying attention to the test with a big life decision.
It is with some sadness mixed with joyful anticipation, that I share with you that I will be relocating to Calgary, Canada in September of this year. This move, like my last move from Houston to Malaysia, is prompted by my ex-husband’s job transfer and our desire to continue to co-parent our 2 boys, now 9 and 14. The boys assisted in our choice of when to move - and wisely, my eldest choose to move at the start of a term rather than mid-term. Which means, I will make a few extra trips back to Asia in October and November to fulfill commitments I have made. This move happily puts us closer to the US, our family and friends.
In just a few days, we will offer the first free Caregiver’s Wellness Retreat in Houston, Texas. I am also excited to share in teachings, both Restorative Yoga and AcroYoga with the Texas Yoga Communities in Houston, The Woodlands, Nacogdoches, and Bryan-College Station in the month of June. July 17-19, I’m honored to be leading an AcroYoga session at True Nature Yoga Festival in the gorgeous Hood River, Oregon. August brings me back to Asia, with teachings in Singapore, Chiang Mai and Kuala Lumpur. Email now, if you’d like to book a session in one of these cities.
While I feel vulnerable and not at all mindful at times when the layers of life become to heavy, the gratitude that I have for such a supportive Yoga community and friends to share that humanness with is overwhelming. I was comforted with this quote this week, as one of our young volunteers for the caregiver’s retreat was killed by a drunk driver: "You will lose everything you love, and it will return to you in new forms.”
Whatever it is you have been going through this past week or year that feels like a loss, will often reveal itself in an entirely new form somewhere else in your life. I don’t know about you, but I am expectantly looking for that bloom to rise out of soil. I believe it will.
Thank you for encouraging me along this wild and wonderful journey. It’s an honor to have you along this path.
With joy and love,
Melissa
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