Sthira and Sukha

I'm sitting on my bed right now surrounded by boxes filled with my stuff. This is certainly a time of being stretched and challenged as I'm balancing finishing my Master's Thesis, constantly grading papers and exams, preparing for my upcoming talk in Israel (not to mention preparing for traveling in Israel), keeping up with my yoga practice and teaching schedule, all the while trying to move out of my apartment before I leave the country on July 8.

Yet my heart is full and I'm grateful. My yoga practice has been teaching me the importance of the balance between Sthira and Sukha, or strength and ease. To find the strength and foundation as I move through postures (and life), all the while finding the softness and ease within each posture. As life gets hard (and the summer months get hot), it's so easy to harden the self just to get through it all. I found in my yoga practice, I've been trying to muscle through my practice as the summer months make a vigorous practice almost unbearable. Yet, when I harden, I cannot grow in my practice. I miss out on the entire purpose of my practice. Likewise, as life gets crazy, and my responsibilities start to weigh me down, it's easy to harden my heart and my mind and muscle my way through it all. But if I stay hardened and try to move through life relying only on willpower and inertia, I miss out on so much! Not only that, but I can drive the people around me that I love away.

So during this time of craziness, I've tried to take time out just to stop and sit. To find the stillness and softness amid the chaos of my schedule. To quiet my heart and mind enough to sit before the Lord and allow Him to speak to me. And He has. Not only has He been speaking, He's been showing me just HOW MUCH I'm blessed.

• In a time when I've been feeling frustrated with yoga teaching, He's provided me with classes to go to where I can be a student again and learn from Master teachers...
• Not only that, but I have a teacher willing to mentor me and pour into me...
• I have true friends in Austin who I found that I can be vulnerable with and grow with...
• I have people offering to help me move, providing me with boxes and helping me to actually pack...
• And people coordinating trucks and manpower so I don't have to rent a U-Haul or call people up myself...
• I'm sitting on so much data for research that I don't even have time to analyze it all before the Israel trips...
• And I have not only one, but two advisers, who are invested in seeing me succeed in the academic world...

So with this craziness I'm realizing how closely God is holding me in the palm of His hand. Which only means that He has a plan for me, one bigger than I can imagine. All I can do is to soften and surrender to Him, to open my mind and heart to all that He has to offer. And to be real. Not to strive toward being someone I'm not, but to just be me.

Finding Myself

May was a blur! I subbed yoga classes like crazy, just about figured out my master's thesis AND my dissertation topics, and have been trying to catch up with friends. This past month, I feel like I've attended many birthday parties, pool parties, and grill-outs, attended a 2 day stats intensive workshop, finally make it to B-Scene at the Blanton, somehow lucked out and scored cheap tickets to the MGMT concert.

This month, my goals are to write up my master's thesis (hah!), submit a Symposium for SPSP, finish my presentation for Israel, and sell my furniture and get ready to move out of my apartment.Somehow in there I'm also planning a pretty crazy birthday party for one of my best friends.

I've been learning a lot of lessons about life and friendships lately though. Lucky for me I've made some of the best friends I've ever had in Austin. Friends who know me inside and out, who love me, rebuke me, encourage me, and help me find myself and be true to myself. I've learned that there IS something to the self-fulfilling prophecy - that to a large degree, you create the environment you are in. That if I stop being so worried about how others see me and whether they accept me, and just go through life assuming as if I already am, chances are people who treat me that way. I've just witnessed so many people so sensitive to rejection that they actually act in such a way that turn people away. People treat you the way you want to be treated. As simple as that truth is, it's been blowing me away. I've carried this into my professional life and found that it's made a huge difference in the way I'm able to network and build connections.

Now I'm not saying that there aren't limitations to this - obviously there are or everyone would be able to overcome any circumstance they are born into (which is just not true). But just this little insight has been very freeing for me. It frees to me to simply be secure and confident in who I am in all areas of my life!

Random Thought

Sometimes I wish life came with a manual on how to protect one's heart.