My overarching goals of 2017 are to Extend and Connect in all aspects of my life: Body, Mind, and Spirit

Physical/Body:  Improve whole body extension (especially the hips and upper spine) and use wheel pose (i.e. backbend) as metric for success

As I watch students in my class attempt yoga poses that require extension range of motion, I see an epidemic in the loss of this motion.  It has happened because of a culture that promotes sitting and the flexed position.  I too feel the loss.  I wonder how it happened, but then look back at when I began to sit.  In 1995, I started a full time academic position and started working on my PhD.  So began the life of sitting which continued for 20 years.  Even now where my primary job is working as a yoga teacher, I find myself sitting in the car, still sitting at a computer, sitting on the floor during yoga classes, sitting, sitting, and more sitting.

Join me each week as I share how I am gradually increasing my ability to extend.

Mind: Extend my knowledge and articulate/express this knowledge to connect with others

As I posted late in last year, my gift is as a teacher.  I always loved teaching in Physical Therapy because it meant I got to keep learning.  And I love to learn, so this part will be easy.  But translating knowledge in a way that it really connects with others will be the challenge.  Sometimes you can be so full of knowledge (and full of yourself) that you miss whether your students are grasping the information.  For me, the joy is in seeing someone “get it”. That is, translating knowledge into true knowing.  Like the student that said she missed yoga in taking a week off due to an illness.  Her body “got it” and then her mind “got it”.  Only she can judge how this practice touches her spirit.

Hopefully I will see you in one of my classes in 2017 so I can connect with you.

Spirit: Talk openly about how yoga affects me spiritually in order to create spiritual connections.  

I have this goal simply because I believe that these are the most important connections we can have.  This will be uncomfortable for me because I like to keep this stuff to myself.  But I think it is important and will keep trying. 

Don’t be surprised if I touch on spiritual issues in class.  Thanks in advance for your support.

Namaste,

Stephanie