Son of Brain Dump

And I'm back.

When I woke up this morning, rain was tapping on the roof, and there was a booming in the distance. The rain increased, and the thunder moved quickly our way. I was pleased, very pleased to wake up to these sounds. The first real thunderstorm marks the beginning of spring in my book. I can finally come out of hibernation, leave the house, start writing more, and sleeping less.

[Ed note - we did have a freak thunder-snowstorm earlier in the year, but that's not quite the same.]

It's strange how these things go in spurts. I get excited about a new thing, writing photography, what-have-you, and then I burn myself out too quickly. I've been trying to do this less, to really commit to things, and to begin slowly.

The best example of this has been yoga. I started back in 2002, almost four years now, and built my practice from once a week to several classes a week. This transformed once I began to teach classes and started practicing on my own.

This past weekend, I went to a great workshop with Desiree Rumbaugh. She's a Senior Certified Anusara Teacher, and she's a pretty amazing person. While we all learned lots of technical elements, I think her attitude is what was the most inspirational. She had a lot of fun doing yoga & helping people out. She talked about how it's transformed her life, and how it's helped her deal with the death of her son.

I learned plenty of technical things, including the importance of using your tailbone to solidfy the foundation in a pose and to integrate the whole body. I learned how to apply that, among other things, to make my backbends like Urdhva Dhanurasana deeper & more stable. She helped me re-learn Supta Virasana, which has always been tricky for me.

As important as learning the technical elements in more detail, was just the experience of attending a workshop. It's great to watch someone who is really dedicated to their craft present and practice. It's great to be around a bunch of other people who are eager to learn and practice themselves. It's great to dedicate a weekend to doing something you love.

And it's great when the excitement and energy from such a weekend carries over to the rest of your life. I'm excited to practice yoga right now, to push myself a little further than I have been, to try new things out. I'm excited to share what I've learned with my students. And I'm excited to harness this energy, to do some more writing.

I'll start with a little at first, and then build upon it. That seems to be the best way for me.