I’ve joined the International Panel that will be a part of the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) annual Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) conference. You can join us for this and so much more. Here’s the link. https://conferences.iayt.org/sytar2021 Early bird booking ends 27 May.

I believe life prepares us for life. Through our thoughts, words, and actions we create the lives we live. We open and close doors, we see and don’t see, we have and miss out on experiences. Each choice opens up the next series of choices and the path is endlessly created before us as we go. At the same time, we are guided in our choices by our previous thoughts, actions, and experiences as memories and impressions that push and pull us to draw toward and away from certain options.

As a young girl I was keen to explore the bigger world. At the time I did it only through books. When I was a child my family did not travel farther than the adjoining states. I did not learn how to travel light because the few places we went we reached by car and there is always room for one more thing tucked in. The first time I got on a plane to travel I was an adult heading for Mexico but I ended up in Colorado. When you are supposed to go to a place somehow it happens. I kept being drawn back to Colorado. In fact, I still have a foothold paying monthly storage on the last few things I have not let go of in Denver. Leaving my dream job and spiritual home in Colorado to fulfill a childhood dream and marital agreement to live in England opened up a life I could have previously only barely glimpsed. Now I have left England and moved across the channel to mainland Europe in the Nederlands. This is another place that I first came to by accident and that I immediately came to love. I tried it out many times before making the commitment to make it home for awhile.

Along the way I have learned that distance gives a perspective that is much harder to achieve when you are close and immersed. What is daily in your view without any contrast is hard to see because it blends right in to how you think things must be. Perspective is useful. It allows us to see the fuller picture, to see possibilities, to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to understand more deeply and broadly. Rumi’s image of the blind men feeling different parts of the elephant and concluding what it was without the rest of the picture is so often how we live our lives. We quickly form assumptions and judgements based on partial facts and then hold to them without willingness to examine or change initial impressions. Letting go and being willing to grow and outgrow are accompanied by loss and sadness which is sometimes so strong it stops us. To move forward we have to trust in ourselves and the world that something new and good will come. This is by no means easy and in fact is often quite fraught with challenge and adversity. Some part of us stays stuck and pulls hard to stay with the familiar whether we like it or not. It’s how we’re made. It helps keep us alive and safe. But this is also something inside that pushes us. Like the local tulips in spring who are drawn upward by the light to open themselves in radiance even if only for a short time. Something internal guides us to orient to the light, to move in the direction of being true to ourselves, to see more clearly the right thing to do and when to do it.

I remind myself of this when I’m undertaking something new or stepping further down a path. When there is a fork in the road and I have to choose. I have used the pandemic to have a seat at a fork in the road and gather my strength. I’ve drawn in, and only extended out to a small circle of clients, students, and friends. I’ve returned to doing the rich psychotherapeutic that first got me started in this direction but now with equal integration of yoga worldview and practice. Increasingly I’ve pulled back from all the other places my energies go to nourish and conserve, wait and see what emerges as the next place to invest myself.

Guess what? It’s going to draw me out into the world again. The global perspective of yoga therapy, my colleagues around the world, the development of an authentic methodology of learning, teaching, and sharing with integrity, depth, and integration - that’s what’s calling. Stay tuned. More is coming. But here’s a taste and an opportunity to share in my worldview. I’ve joined the International Panel that will be a part of the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT) annual Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research (SYTAR) conference. You can join us for this and so much more. Here’s the link. https://conferences.iayt.org/sytar2021 Early bird booking ends 27 May.