Insight from the Inflight Magazine

As a yoga teacher, I already "knew" the beautiful benefits of meditation but a recent article in AirTran's inflight magazine really resounded with me.  

It's titled "Nothing Really Matters" and it's worth the read if you have a couple minutes.  There's no new age-y vibe in it.  It's straightforward.  Seriously, here's an interesting bit from it:

"But unplugging is hard to do. A recent study by researchers at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business found that most people consider Facebook, Twitter and email harder to resist than cigarettes and alcohol. In the study, 205 adults wore devices that recorded a total of 7,827 reports about their daily desires. The desire for media and work proved the most difficult to resist."


It's a really short article that gets right to the point:

"You can achieve a lot—regeneration, calm, emotional balance—by doing nothing."

Now I know how to handle those agitated, sleepless times on my next flight.

Peace,

Stacey

Smoky Yoga Hikes

Like I said yesterday, we just got back from an amazing trip where we tried to walk lighter on the Earth and renew our spirits as well.  I can go on and on about how great traveling makes me feel… but, luckily for you, this post isn't about that.  One of the little things that I did on this trip was fitting some yoga in whenever possible.  I didn’t bring my yoga mat but I did manage to carry everything I needed for over a week on my back.

I'm loving my new pack!

I made time for a little yoga practice at the campground and without a mat, I just practiced right on the grass.  This was very grounding (get it?) as it brought me directly in contact with the Earth.  The grass was mostly dead and brittle from the severe drought but it was nice to be on grass nonetheless.

That's smoke from the newest wildfire. (We'd already taken down our tent.)

Most days I played on the logs that separated us from the other campsites.  (You can see my favorite log in that picture above.)  Somehow I don’t have any pictures of this but I’m guessing most of our neighbors do.  I’m sure they thought I was crazy because I was usually just seeing which balancing poses I could do on knotty logs that kept rolling.  As you can imagine my warm-up sun salutations worked out much better than my balancing-half-moons and warrior-threes.  

Look at all that smoke behind my mid-hike mermaid pose

How could I “walk lighter on the Earth” without actually walking though?!?  We did a fair bit of hiking while we were there.  I mean, really, we had to at least hike to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point near Jenny Lake.  Plus, you can’t see Old Faithful nor the Paint Pots from your car as you drive around Yellowstone!  Hiking was really fun for us.

The trail at the summit of Signal Mountain (elevation 7,720 ft.)

Of course, you can’t take me hiking (or pretty much anywhere outside) without some sort of yoga thrown in for good measure.

Notice my hiking shoes were needed to get down to Jenny Lake.

What about you?  How do you connect with nature when you're away from home?

Peace,

Stacey