fuel for my journey

i haven't finished editing my travel photographs yet (ok, i haven't even started), so i thought i would share these three songs which became my travel anthems during my month in thailand/bali.  i listened to them when i was pulling away from my house in the super shuttle, equal parts excited to be going and sad to be leaving.  i listened to them during my 13 hour layover in frankfurt, when after an unexciting peak at the city i got stuck on waiting on an outdoor train platform during a heat wave because i fell asleep and missed the airport station.  i listened to them when i first put my bags down in my little chiang mai hotel room with the bad carpet and realized it was up to me to get the most out of my time alone in an exotic country.  they took me over the indian ocean when i saw bali's radiant coast for the first time from above.  they shook me out of a mid-week funk during the yoga retreat so much so that i played them for the group and made them dance with me so we feel free together.  finally they brought me back the long way home and now urge me on as i think about how to write about my trip.  in my long list of travel gratitude, i wish to thank music.  i may travel but she is really what carries me.

so listen up and stay tuned for photographs and further reflections on a dream trip.  i'll get to them in between cuddling my housemates (adam and poncho), figuring out what to do with our awesome tomato crop and just soaking up the beauty of home.

grace and goodbye (for a month)

aren't these guys just the sweetest-looking family?  after knowing them all for a couple of years now, i can say that they are just as wonderful as they look, and grace is just as full of life as any five year old should be.  we had a really fun shoot last weekend at the franciscan monestary, which is incredibly lovely if you've never checked it out.  it was actually our second shoot--the first was lost when my house was broken into last spring.  erin and rob, were so understanding about it and after missing two shoots due to rain, we all agreed that the fourth time is the charm.

this was my last shoot before i leave town.  tonight i'll take a plane to frankfurt, tomorrow another to bangkok, and finally another to chiang mai in the north where i will probably collapse on my hotel bed and only rouse myself to eat some of this delicious food i've been hearing so much about.  i've been saving up my magazines for the lat month and even bought a special neck pillow in the hopes that i can sleep on some of epic journey. when i finally land, i'll finally be the world's center of thai massage and hope to soak up as much as i can in the ten days that i am there before traveling on to another adventure of leading a yoga retreat in bali. 

so obviously, this trip is a dream come true.  sarita and i talked about it for years. it felt exotic and far away and like it was something that someone else did.  yet we're making it happen.  like all big dreams, we just had the take the first step--finding our mountain retreat center in the middle of a green jungle and writing them an email to see when they were free--and the rest just happened from there.  it was a lot of work and promotion and faith, but the actual steps were pretty logical.  when i see it as just doing the next right thing, it makes me feel like the world is open to us, beckoning us even, and that all we have to do is stay focused on what we really want.

there will be 12 of us total, stepping into this retreat and other asian travels. who knows what will come of it?  one of my students decided last-minute to come to my yoga retreat in costa rica this last march.  he had a wonderful time and ended up falling in love with a beautiful swedish lady on the retreat.  since returning, she's already been to dc twice, and he has plans to go to sweden.  it's really exciting to me to hear about it and a healthy reminder that when i invite people to go along on my dream, it will give them the opportunity to go for some of their own.

so what's your dream that feels a little bigger and bolder? what's the one the makes your a little bit nervous?  say it out loud.  take a deep breath. what is the first step you could take? let it be something really small like writing an email or doing a search.  take another deep breath. now take the step. see what happens next and know you are brave in even just thinking about this stuff.

i know myself and know that i probably won't blog until i come home, but if you use instagram (and you should because it's so fun) then my username is gracedplace and i'd love for you to follow me and see some photographs. 

also, save the date for this next dream retreat with yael the last weekend in september:

today i'm feeling like there is so much inspiration in the world

spring is here! life is growing all around us.  i mean, i suppose it's always growing--the rest of dormancy being so necessary for the cycle--but right now i can really see it happen over the course of the days.  we have four pots of tomatoes shooting up on our front porch, salad greens thriving in the  back balcony window box, and our ledroit park plot is filling in with spicy radishes and mustard greens, among other things.  i love it because  it was my dream for years to garden.  i wanted to dig in the dirt and wear rubber shoes and eat from my own efforts.  that dream seemed complicated and far away for so long, but like all dreams, now that it's here nothing seems simpler.  i just put good seeds in fertile soil and stand back.

it's important to remember that, right? when the time is right for something to happen, it feels incredibly simple.  the next step is always the easiest one and the secret is always faith.  one of my favorite yoga sutras is 1.14. "practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness."  i do believe that we can create what we want through shifting our perspective from lack to fullness and seeing the world through a filter of gratitude.  i also believe this can be a really long, arduous journey that will bring up a lot of muck in the process.

last night i finished reading brene brown's new book, daring greatly.  as a social researcher who studied vulnerability and shame over the past decades, she began to notice that a small group of people set themselves apart as "wholehearted" (her word to describe them).  she found that although we all deal with the muckiness--shame, low self-esteem, compulsion, etc--the people who seem to grow from it are the one who "dare greatly" and reach out during their most difficult moments.  the courageous act of reaching out in those moments and laying it all out helped those wholehearted people to see that 1) we all deal with this stuff so we can be compassionate with ourselves  2) even if we do bad things or if bad things happen to us, it doesn't mean we aren't also worth of love, joy and connection.

i love this idea and try to practice it as much as i can in my life.  it asks me to do on a daily basis what feels counter intuitive to the happiness i hope to receive.  instead of impressing the world around me with how perfectly beyond fault i am, all i have to be is honest and truthful about what i feel.  this is difficult for me.  it makes me think about my time as a sensitive fourth grader who just wanted to read during recess in the shady spot, leaning up against the cool brick wall.  after a few days of doing this, my teacher told me she was worried for me and i had to start playing games like four square and HORSE with the other kids.  squinting in the sun, i slowly walked out to the blacktop and started following other peoples rules.  this went on for a good long while in my life.

over a long practice of self-inquiry, i have come to remember that i am introvert who loves connecting at my own pace with people i trust.  when i get overtired and overstimulated by the world, i start to doubt myself and try to compensate by trying to give others what they want.  brene brown calls this our worthiness "hustle." that word feels really right to me because of how mechanic and exhausting it can be.  in those moments, it can be really hard to figure out what i am actually feeling.  yet when i do interrupt that process with the honest space of a yoga class or a cathartic journaling session or by talking to my short-list of confidants, i have no choice but to just be with my messy self.  once i am there, i am surprised by how accurately i know my feelings and how cleansing it can be just to tell the truth.  what's more, i find when i am willing to be in this honest space, i am so much better at being there for the people that i love during their difficult moments.  looking back at my life, i see how crucial these moments have been for my own growth and how much sharing them with my confidants has bonded us together.

yay truth! yay connection! yay brene brown for having the courage to give it all a name! although i think it will take me the rest of my days to fully learn this lesson, i am content for the long practice ahead.  the deep sweetness that lurks amidst all the the sweaty ardor makes walking this path well worth it.

from colossal (thanks erik): 

To help thwart rampant insurance fraud in Russia many cars are now equipped with dash cams to capture what unfolds in front of vehicles in an attempt to aid innocent persons, law enforcement, and insurance firms. This has lead to almost unlimited hours of footage found online of unbelievable accidents, close calls, and some of the worst of human behavior. Luckily somebody took it upon themselves to edit together some of the most amazingly thoughtful actions and tender moments caught with these same dash cams and edited into this short clip. And can I just say what on Earth is up with that kid running around on the highway!? (via kottke)

i really don't know who these ladies are, but seeing their moment at a bat mitzvah i photographed in january makes me feel like i do.

happy friday! i'm packing up to leave to teach my yoga retreat with steve in west virginia.  we have a full group, great people running our kitchen and the weather forecast is lovely.  i am filled with gratitude about all of this. there are also a lot of big transitions and losses going on with people that i love and i am really feeling for them.  it feels like such a honor to be there for them yet when i'm not quite sure how to help or what to say when life is big and hard. social researcher brene brown says that one of the most vulnerable times is figuring out to say to someone who is grieving. what helps me is to come back to the immediate moment, as pema chodron so beautifully expresses in the quote below, and remember that our whole big, messy lives can be exactly the fuel we need to soften and grow and become who we really know we are.  remembering this makes me feel like wherever i am standing is the best place i could possible be.

"Now. That's the key. Now, now, now. Mindfulness trains you to be awake
and alive, fully curious, about what? Well, about now, right? You sit
in meditation and the out-breath is now and waking up from your
fantasies is now and even the fantasies are now although they seem to
take you into the past and into the future. The more you can be
completely now, the more you realize that you're in the center of the
world, standing in the middle of a sacred circle. It's no small affair,
whether you're brushing your teeth or cooking your food or wiping your
bottom. Whatever you're doing, you're doing it now.

Our life's work is to use what we have been given to wake up. If there
were two people who were exactly the same--same body, same speech, same
mind, same mother, same father, same house, same food, everything the
same--one of them could use what he has to wake up and the other could
use it to become more resentful, bitter and sour. It doesn't matter
what you are given, whether it's physical deformity or enormous wealth
or poverty, beauty or ugliness, mental stability or mental instability,
life in the middle of a madhouse or life in the middle of a peaceful,
silent desert. Whatever you're given can wake you up or put you to
sleep. That's the challenge of now: What are you going to do with what
you have already--your body, your speech, your mind?"

--Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness

a photo backlog/embracing "maybe"

fall throwback photo of arielle and talal expecting at the arboretum (their sweet baby rafi is now rounding out his fourth month)

this month has taken me to costa rica and back (our third time, just as beautiful and transcendent as ever), through a passionate love affair with the cherry blossoms here in dc, and has further solidified my identity as a dog owner.  poncho is keeping his ever-vigilant watch on our back balcony as i write this and i am having a hard time imagining life before him.  my favorite moment of the day is when lift my head from my pillow to seeing him staring at me and wagging his tail to say he's happy the day is beginning.

the ponchster

of course there is so much lifeyness within it all.  people i love are struggling with their health, there's been some hard transition in a few of the places where i teach, and i may have cut my bangs way too short.  as always, i had a lot of fun and did a lot personal growth under a sunny sky while i was on retreat and coming back home for three more weeks of winter felt harder than i would have expected.  as i change, i have to let my life change around me.  one of those really interesting places is in the arena of commitments and self-care.

 twin baby girls that i've already had the privilege of photographing twice in these past six months

for a long time, i've realized that our best qualities as human beings can always be our worst. i love people and i love serving people (positive) and sometimes i so desperately want to please people that  i say "yes" to everything people ask me and then i make myself miserable trying to keep up with my unrealistic schedule.  whew, it feels so good just to type that all out.  it's not secret to those who are close to me.  they are used to be running around and juggling all the irons in my fire and have seen me break down from tiredness and frustration as a result.  they have all probably had to wait for me while i was late or been disappointed when i didn't show up at all.

last weekend, i saw this great documentary about krishna das's life.   he's a really powerful yoga kirtan singer who does not not sound like the guy from the crash test dummies.   so it turns out that he grew up depressed and didn't even start to break free from it until he met his indian guru when he was in his 20's and realized what true love felt like.  what i like most about his story was that it wasn't a straight line to spiritual enlightment.  his guru sends him home to hang out with ram dass and lead yoga movement in the states.  he finds some happiness.  then his guru dies and he thinks his happiness is gone forever so he sinks into another deep depression which involves a lot of cocaine.  he's really struggling with addiction until he gets a strong message from another teacher to get off the cocaine. sober, he starts singing again and starts gaining some popularity in the yoga movement doing what he loves.  then he feels those self-destructive impulses again and realizes he will just repeat the cycle over again unless he gets himself to india again.  he stays at his guru's ashram until during a sacred festival he finally gets a big hit of enlightenment and in his words "finally got out of my own way."

aviva and her brother at her bat mitzvah in february

that struck me as important.  i've always talked about how important it is to look within, but hearing this gave a name to what i was doing to block my own happiness.  being over-committed makes me feel like i am never quite present with what i am doing.  if i agree to something mostly to make someone else happy, i get resentful. when i am running late, i get anxious and don't show up as my best self.  also, i suspect that it makes people in my life feel like they can't quite trust me to do what i say. that's definitely not what i want.

i am willing to be truthful about this because i know that it will improve my life without harming anyone else.  my goal is to be someone who says "no" to most things so i can say "yes" to what i really care about.  but i know that forming new habits take time.  to carry me through i am embracing the power of the word "maybe."  i'm saying it to things and asking for more time to make decisions and being more specific about what i do want.  a major thing i do want is rest.  naps and restorative yoga and watching "parks and rec" and writing down little things in my journal.  this makes me remember that my life is good and that i deserve to enjoy it, even if that process needs some continual fine-tuning.

last year's watercolor of the view from the yoga deck at anamaya yoga resort in costa rica--the view continues to be incredible