Thursday, September 27, 2012

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

I lived in New Mexico for 5 years and fell madly in love with.... green chile.  This article explains it the best:  Why I love green chile.

And it's true, the early fall, when the roasting happens... Albuquerque fill with the scent of roasted chiles (which smell almost a little like something else...if you know what I'm saying).  HATCH Green Chile's are special.  And don't be fooled by others... It has to be from New Mexico.  Not all green chile's are the same, believe me I've tried to make due without.

It just doesn't work.

LONG LIVE GREEN CHILE!  I totally need a shirt with that on it.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

This no sleep thing...

What the heck, it's Saturday night-- actually Sunday morning.  After 2 am.  I'm not even coming home from anywhere exciting.  In fact, I've been home all evening, and even tried to go to sleep early because I was so tired.  But yet, here I am wide awake, tired, and can't sleep.

I guess I have to much on my mind.  ARGH!  Darn chitta vritti.  Too much on my mind.  I was just lying there thinking and thinking away.  Then telling myself to stop thinking, and then reminding myself to just focus on the breath (just like a good yogi).

But to no avail, and here I write.

It's busy week after week, and I guess when the mind is over loaded, it just has a tough time slowing down.  It's also the first day of fall.  Shifting seasons can sometimes have an effect on people.  I love fall, maybe I'm just too darned excited for the changing leaves, the spiced apple cider, and pumpkin pie!  I dunno.

But this no sleep thing.  It's a but much for me.  I was doing so well.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Reminders

I really like Sunday mornings.  It's so peaceful.  Not much traffic, not much movement, just the sounds of me shifting in my seat and the birds waking up.  There's not much to not like.  I'm sitting here thinking about Saturday and drinking a warm cup of tea.  I'm thinking about how the summer is coming to a close, and how the chill in the air is just the beginning of how everything will soon start to change colors, whither away.

It's just a reminder.

Yesterday was also a great reminder.  I went with some of my friends to do yoga with one of my teachers from training.  He's pretty amazing.  He has a great way of making everyone feeling welcome. I think I needed that reminder too.  I forget that a lot of people have very different views of yoga, which is fine.  You can look at yoga as a tao.  Which is "way".  So yoga is a way, and then within yoga there are many ways.  I love that philosophy, because it's so much more inclusive.

Sometimes I feel people restrict what is or isn't yoga.  But I truly feel that anything could be yoga.  After all yoga is breath.  Linking your breath to movement, in a special way is vinyasa.  One of the 8 limbs of yoga is meditation.  So, if I consider yoga to be anything, maybe drinking tea could be yoga!

I think yoga really just reminds us that thinking about our actions is important.  Being present, focusing on what is right here.

Yesterday was a pretty amazing day.  I brought  to of my friends who are visiting from Connecticut to yoga.  They've never been to a yoga class, and I think they had a great time.  It was interesting to try and catch them out of the corner of my eye during our class.  They were definitely having a good experience, and I'm so glad that they're first "real" class was with me and my teacher.

The other part of the day was being around this little guy, pictured below.  During practice he just came around, sat with us, crawled underneath us, fed us little bit of apple, and just watched.  He was not only a peaceful little guy, but a fun little guy.  It was nice to have him around our circle.  Of course there were time when he ran off to look at something, but he was just a cutie pie the whole time.  Another reminder.

In the next couple of months I hope that these reminders of the weekend come back to me.  It's one of the few times in the past couple of months that I've felt like things seemed to slow down.

Hope ya'll are having a great weekend out there!

An amazing space that was quiet, and away from traffic.  A nice little oasis in the middle of chaos

There's the little guy, buddha, and me

Friday, September 07, 2012

Strange

Lately, I've been having a lot of strange dreams.  Ones that I can't really figure out why I might be dreaming them.  I haven't been lost in thought about other people, places or things.  But they seem to come up in these last few nights.

Are dreams a way of working something out?  Or are they just "head movies" that float around when I'm trying to sleep?

Then you have one camp that says dreaming is good, because that means you're getting into deep sleep, while others say dreaming is bad... that's a disturbed mind (not disturbed as in crazy, disturbed as in disturbed thoughts, I mean, you know, a busy mind....just had to clear that up).

So I don't know, I think no matter who says what, I'm glad I'm dreaming, because that means at the very least I am getting some sleep.  And lack of sleep has plagued me for years.  The sleep has come back and it must mean that I'm keeping very busy.  Well, some what.  Next week it really starts.  I begin 2 graduate classes and start the after school art/yoga program.  Oh, and let me throw in an original art design for his yoga training logo!  It's going to be crazy!!!!

Anyway, it is Friday, my students are busy working on their "elements of design"- Kandinsky inspired- group drawings.  Some of them look like a mess, but others.... may have some interesting qualities.   I need to start blogging their artwork again...  If I do, I'll post the link here.

HAPPY FRIDAY TO ALL!!

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

"First" day done

It's been a long time coming, this first day of school.  I've been working already for over a month, but the first day, still feels like the first day.  Even though our population is transient we like to feel like we're giving them a welcoming to school.

It was a busy day.  We started the school year with a brand new schedule.   I do feel like I'm kind of running a race today.  I have all my classes in a row, and we're going to try out team-teaching.  I'm not really sure how it's going to work, considering we've never done that before in this arena.  Also we've added an advisory period, a ROAR period, and a wrap up period.  It all sounds good, but no one had planned for it.  Also- to include all this stuff we have to shorten all the classes.  Which is insane!  It definitely keeps us on our toes.  The reason it is like this because of the d-home schedule.  The staff has a different schedule that has to allow for their breaks (given their 12 hour shifts).  So there's only so much we can do.

It's hard.  Our day is actually longer right now.  Which makes me wonder about my after school program.  What's going to happen to that?  We only have a short window for that as well.   Right now, our yoga/art program is looking really non-exsistent.  45 minutes... is definitely not even close to enough.

Anyway-  we'll see what happens.  I can't control what happens, I have to be flexible, adjust and try to ask for what I need.  Hopefully a change can be made to accommodate, but if not, then I guess we'll shop our after school program somewhere else.  It just would be nice to apply it to the students we have, they need it the most.

So, it was an ok day, there is a lot to figure out before the end of the week.  But that's always the case where I work.  There's alway something.

Only 84 more days until Thanksgiving... ugh.  I can't think about that.