New Beginnings

New beginnings can come at any time and in many forms. I thankfully feel the sense of new beginnings many times during the year.

Always I feel this in the spring...freshness...the spring rain washing away the grey... the salt... the muted tones. Watching the miracle of the ground and trees waking up. Seeing the tender new buds emerge. Spring is about opening windows and breathing a little deeper.

September is also a time that is full of newness with its crisp clean air, the promise of routine, new school clothes, clean sneakers, fresh backpacks, and the smell of a new pencil case (yes, I have small children but the memory of my school days are still fresh in my mind!).

And January...the New Year. Changing the calendar (and hoping that I find a calendar with just the right size of the square). It is a time of internal cleaning of the body and mind. Thinking of the future...making plans for the self...hoping and believing in the possibility of a new start.

And finally, I found my new beginnings on my mat and in my yoga practice every day. It is my mat that helps me keep coming back to the idea of renewal. Beginning again and again and again.

Every morning I wake, I am new. Every time I come to my mat, I am new. My body has changed. My mind has changed.

My yoga practice will change for that day and I discover that my yoga is there once again for me to experience anew. Maybe my practice will tell me that I am closed, tight, sluggish, and uncompromising. Maybe the practice will tell me that I am open, soft, more free today, more spacious. Wonderfully, every time I come to my mat, it is a new beginning. My new beginning.

This January, the mat has brought me close to the reality that so much has changed for me. The month of December was busy, exciting, tiring, hectic and full of gratitude. The transformation of the studio forced me to realize that the studio is real. It has moved away from me in a sense. When I started this studio it began with "I just want to teach a few classes". Watching the studio transform this month made me realize how this studio has grown up around me. It has grown with the guidance of our amazing teachers and our inspiring students. It has grown with the belief that it just will happen. It has had its own source of renewal.

And so it is a new beginning for me, for you and the studio. I move into this time of change with an open mind and a sense of softness and gratitude.