This week, I wrote a post on my other site about the power of choosing ONE Practice.

Just one. Not a complete overhaul, as if we are a massive home improvement project.  ONE practice to commit to and cherish for the year.  One practice that will change everything from the inside out.

I had to share with you, yoginis. Since yoga is ALL about practice.

I hope you’ll join me.

Take a Practice-Full Approach to the New Year.

You are constantly engaged in practices – the way you think, the way you eat, the way you move your body, the way you relate to others, the way you speak, and the way that you face challenges.

The question is: do your current practices move you closer to what you truly desire?

Practice defines your life.

The way you show up and practice on a day to day basis defines your outcomes, how you feel, and what you believe about yourself. The internal and external obstacles that you face provide some of the greatest opportunities for you to choose a different way. Everything in your life, then, has the potential to be a spiritual practice – a way to bring awareness and choice to all areas of our life.

Just choose ONE.

At this time of year, it is tempting to want to change everything. But what if one practice, done daily, could begin to change everything? Discover YOUR practice – the one that comes from the very wisest and most loving part of your being that will support every aspect of your life.

In this 60-minute class, you will:

• Discover your ONE practice.
• Define your deepest motivation for committing to your practice.
• Know in your bones how deeply this practice will benefit you.

Details:

• Call Date: Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
• Time: 12:00 eastern, 60-minutes
• Where: Your coziest spot, on the telephone

THIS CALL IS FR*EE

>>Click here<< to get call information, the recording, and the handout for this call.

Give yourself the gift of One Practice in 2012. Start your year off right. End it even better.

I’m looking forward to practicing with you!!

xoxo.nona

My mother-in-law is not my favorite person.

When I think about being in her presence, it makes me physically ill.

She was a horrible mother.

She is really needy.

She is like a child – demanding and dramatic when she doesn’t get her way.

I hate to think of my daughter going anywhere near her.

It’s awful, really.

And, when my husband brings up the fact that it’s time to visit, I feel such resistance that it makes my stomach hurt and tears sting my eyes.

In fact, my jaw sets – tight – and I am no longer present with my daughter.  I become a horrible mother, a difficult wife.  I can barely breath -because I need for things to be my way – meaning, everyone agrees with me and we don’t go.  I become dramatic and demanding, “Clara’s life will be ruined if we let your Mother near her!”

The bell rings, in the form of my mother-in-law.

Just like the meditation bell, at the beginning of practice, asking us to wake up to the present moment. Can you hear it’s echo? Showing me where I am still asleep. I turn into her, in that moment.  I have no compassion. No tolerance. I am all judgement and need.  And I know, in an instant.

How painful it is to be her.

Because I am just like her. I know, because I make extreme efforts to escape being near it.  I want nothing to do with the parts of myself that are caught up in this kind of pain and suffering.  I want to escape in the worst kind of way.  I avoid it in myriad ways, denying it as part of my inner experience.

The bell echoes.

A tiny crack of compassion opens up in my heart.  For myself, for my mother-in-law.  We are all human.  My mother-in-law has, as my daughter, would say, “Mistaked” many times in her life.  So have I.  I’ve had the ability to change my circumstances and make amends where perhaps she has not.

My heart melts open.

We will go see her, and I smile when I think about how joy-filled she will be to see Clara and her son.  I cry a bit more, in gratitude – something important has shifted for me.  An internal opening that will echo and ripple through many parts of my life.

In gratitude for the times I hear the bell ring…

Namasté, yoginis. 

Yesterday, I spent the morning at the hospital.

IV drip, sedation, and a thin tube and camera down my throat, looking at a tiny spot in my lower stomach.  This saga with my body began in 2007, as we prepared to leave for Italy.

Almost five years ago, I was not a coach.  I had turned my back on having any kind of “real” work in the world beside being a wife and a mother.  I had spent my life largely trying to escape painful emotions, so, even though I was already a yoga teacher, my body and I were not on the best of terms.

The perfect storm arrived.

Moving twice in 10 months with a small child, lack of sleep from said child, an obsession with running a marathon, and my growing fear about our move to Italy coupled with my penchant to try and get away from painful emotions was a perfect storm.  I got sick.  Very sick – and no one could find anything ‘seriously’ wrong with me. Which made my fear grow by leaps and bounds. I desperately looked outside of myself for an answer and some relief. My husband was baffled.  I was grief-stricken and afraid.

There was no escape, no external solution.  No matter what I did, my body hurt, my heart ached, and my thoughts raced.  No one and nothing could fix it. As much as I fought it, yoga and meditation and years of therapy had readied me for this.

I collapsed inward. 

My yoga mat developed well-worn grooves as I breathed and cried and sat meditation. I breathed into and around the pain in my body and the emotions that crashed on my internal shore, willing my mind to stay – to let the pain be, to make friends with the emotions that felt like they would drown me. Miraculously, the emotional swell began to subside – feelings didn’t kill me (I was surprised). Some days my body would feel so good.  Other days, the pain would be awful.

I forged a tentative truce with my body. 

The pain started to subside when I could let go.  My body became the teacher and I the student.  The pain in my body was asking me to unlock and heal the past – the desire to escape and distract myself from what is true, the trauma, the dysfunction, my love/hate relationship to money and the business world, the abuse I suffered at my own hands….  A call to make peace with the many-faceted diamond of my life, outward and inward, past and present.

In five short years, I’ve come so far.

In Italy, I went through multiple procedures and hospitalizations.  I continued to work at the root cause of the pain and suffering in my body and my life.  I’m still working on it, but today, I’m mostly pain-free.  This work of healing continues to bring me to a peaceful and happy relationship with myself and my life.  Five years ago, I could not have imagined the happiness, success, love, and peace there would be in my life today.

My heart is grateful for the storms.

Yesterday, the doctors pronounced my gut healed.  No more follow-ups necessary, no signs of cancerous tissue or inflammation.  Truly a miracle.  But not.

Life, in all of it’s beauty and chaos, happens for me, not to me.

It all happens exactly as it’s supposed to.  This moment, and my body and emotions, will continue to teach me.  Will continue to help me polish the diamond of my life.

Namasté, yoginis.