COURTNEY ROHAN YOGA

On Facebook recently, one of my friends posted: “Drop a busted picture of yourself.” How cute, I thought. I want to drop one, and then I looked through my photo reel and found none. I realized: I don’t keep the busted pictures. I delete them immediately. The perfection of a yoga picture, of any picture, is only one interpretation of the whole. The practice is long, or maybe the experience is.  Sometimes, it is hard. And, thank The Divine there are times when the pictures show ease, but the practice is more than all of this.  The experience of life is more than what we capture in a moment. Yet, as we practice, tooling through a sequence or holding poses to a complete stretch, to union with the spirit, this is perfect, though it might not always look so.  This is one of the reasons why people practice and share their journey. There is growth through the poses, through your stance each time you go there, and no matter the extent to which they try to share their experie

Do you have a yoga mat? Good, if you do; fine, if you don’t. Do you have a room, a space, green grass, a park? Good. The hardest part of a yoga practice is not having props or room to do the practice, it is what we tell ourselves.  We tell ourselves we need certain specific things in order to do the practice, when this is far from the truth. Showing up daily to a yoga practice, or whatever practice may be for you, is one of the challenges that we all face. Everyone has days when they do not want to go there, but the professional verses the amateur shows up anyway. Lisa Dietz, "Wheelchair Yoga"  www.arts.state.mn.us I do not mean amateur because you might not be able to do advanced poses; that is not always what a yoga practice looks like anyway. Pictures of people doing yoga are not a clear representation of what goes on before or after on that mat. A wheelchair bound yogi or a bedridden one’s practice is unique to their need. If you have an injury, your prac

As a 7 th  grade English teacher, I work with and am one of those people who aims to control. I would not say I am what many have coined a “control freak,” but some days I come close. In a classroom setting, teachers are told, they must have control of their class. This can look lots of ways, but most importantly, when teachers do not have the students’ attention, they are not really teaching anything at all. And it appears that what they have to say is not worth the listen, though in most cases, this is very far from the truth. There really is no way to control another being, to make someone listen or do what you say. We can influence, but we can not control. Even in the penal system, control of the inmates is not really that. It is an influencing, if the listener decides that the speaker has something that is needed. Still, the listener may not do what is being asked, but the seed was planted. This is the case with most things: People speak; we listen or not. We speak; people

“It’s just like water. I ain’t felt this way in years.” - Lauryn Hill, Just Like Water The body is made up of more water than anything else, which clearly opens the door to introspection on how we address the water aspects of ourselves. This means that we could literally see ourselves as water and mimic the ways that it moves or stills to deal with our continence. Water like spirit is necessary for life. But the glory of its presence is natural until we are no longer in the body or can no longer take in enough water to sustain its functioning. We can live without food, but we can not live without water.  Though I do not believe that water ends, as presence does not end, water may not be flowing through the body, but as we have it in the body, it is the symbol of presence. When we are done with it, it will be used again. It will still be present. It is interesting to consider this idea in areas of the world where water is scare. People have traditionally lived to avoid

Recently, Boston , my son, left his bag in the backseat of his friend’s car. The bag contained some most important items, his phone and ipad charger. When my husband called him the night he left the chargers, I am told that Boston did not even say hi when he answered the phone. No. The most important thing he needed to say upon answering the phone was, “Dad, my phone’s on 1 percent!” He texted me with the same message along with a desperate, “Call me!” There are several things that are really keen about this situation. Would you agree? I mean, when did it matter so much to be in constant contact with everyone? When you went to your friend’s house as a kid, that was it. You were at your friend’s house and if your parents wanted to reach you, they’d call that house. And, if you’re old enough, you remember when the phone at your friend’s house did not need to be charged. Times have changed. From analog to digital, our interactions and connections have become brand new. And we rely o

 I love spring. It is one of those times of year where everywhere you look is hopeful. The trees are budding, wildlife is multiplying, people and animals, stretching their arms and legs and waking from their winter set. There is this feeling of everything being light, and the time change helps everything stay light longer during our daily, waking hours. So that helps. But spring, even without considering daylight savings time as part of the equation, is a pleasant passageway to a simple, light truth. There are a lot of things to learn from each season. In spring, when the air feels cleaner and light, when love feels nearer and hopeful, like all you see around you, that is the time to begin moving. One would think that fall would be the time; however, fall would be the last of the movement and scurry, the tail end, the last drop. Winter is sitting, subtle movement, and summer is surrender and passion, movement in the thick, which can be fast or slow depending on the day and what ha

Click here to register! There is always something to experience, some new whisper of a thing or interaction in the now to keep us going. Our calenders can get full all too quickly at times, and then there is this something inside life that sparkles and dims at times, too, on top of it all. We enjoy or cry with this, if we choose, and we wonder, possibly, as it unfolds, how to work it all out. It can be a true stretch to make sense of it all.  But, it really is all good, and that is more than enough to know. By golly, we could experience the full range of emotion, sometimes in moments :). Let us focus though on emotional health and emotional heart smarts instead. I am not just referring to the heart beating in your body, but the one that surrenders and creates consciously that which we hope to see. To fully experience life, we must take the time to seek ourselves more fully.This will breed emotional heath, make your intentions clearer and your heart smart; it will connect knowle