honeyflake

thinking sunny thoughts

 
 portrait of the artist's mother

my new favorite sketch... by margaret. of me. me sitting on the couch, posed and propped by the artist herself. me just sitting, quite still, straight up, feet on the floor, watching her consider things like shadows, highlights and pencil colors... it was interesting to be on the other side of the sketchbook - i think within mili-seconds i felt the urge to move and fidget... but i resisted as best that i could, turning my awareness to my breath and using the time as a bit of a mini-meditation session. but i must admit that my thoughts were wandering here and there and to a topic that has been on my mind quite a bit lately... "spring". march is here and and so are some hints that the fresh green season is nearing...  a few small sunny, spring-like thoughts i'd like to share today, enjoy:

• outside, our tulips have broken through the earth and are showing their pointy tops. that's always a great late-winter discovery, right?

• for some sunshine-filled garden inspiration, take a look at emily's video tutorial for making stepping stones. i've always loved all the warmth and creativity at her blog. this latest project of her's is very sweet - can't wait to scatter a bunch around our yard this spring.

• the beginning of baseball's spring training! so good. we love, love, love the baseball and are so excited to start cheering on the home team for 2010 and resume the seasonal tradition of quoting from the old man and the sea. see? i knew the curling withdrawal wouldn't last long...

• surya namaskar, yoga's sun salutation, even on the yoga mat my thought's are coming back to the sun. one time, two times, six times (there are times when i even lose count). i love the steadiness and consistency that comes about by practicing this deeply and often. steadiness and consistency through the transitions — delightful!

practice

"hi. hello everyone. how is everyone today?" until about 11:30pm tonight, that opening line and a few crafty visual aides were all i had together for a little presentation i'll be giving tomorrow... a small talk, to an awesome audience aging from about 6-10 years old, about yoga! i've been collecting fragmented thoughts on the goodness of children and yoga here and there for the past week or so, but today was my day to sit down (with mug after mug of lemon ginger tea), get organized and pull it all together! lots to cover in a short time... the moving... the breathing... the flow...  (so wishing i started preparing earlier!!) but finally, here it is almost midnight and i just did my first rough run through with chuck as my stand in audience. my plan is pretty much to take a deep breath and let it unfold. here's hoping my young yogis are as captivated as he was.

yoga party

we planned this little party for margaret and a few of her friends — some bending and stretching yoga fun to celebrate her sixth birthday. we borrowed some space from my yoga ashram, brought along some hand-crafted decorations and snacks and simply set up for a mini kids yoga class/party...

well actually, first there were invites... the rolled purple paper invites were inspired by rolled up yoga mats - tied with embroidery floss to have carrying handles, like some real mats do...

after we set the date and time, and you can imagine it wasn't much long after, the yoga party ideas began to flow... here are a few of the details from the day...

we created a happy mandala design that we then silkscreened on some organic cotton t-shirts for the little yogis to wear at our gathering (and to take home too) to spread the happiness. we set these out on the mats before the guests arrived. then there were the prayer flags...

the birthday-wish-filled prayer flags were inspired by the traditional tibetan flags, slightly modified for our celebration, but overflowing with good intentions non-the-less... they were a mix of simple fabric rectangles, some were painted with fabric paints and others were embellished with fabric applique on the sewing machine. these were hung over the party tables where we set out the snacks and drinks and cupcakes. i tried to keep the food as simple as i could... organic red (or perhaps party matching purple?) grapes, cheese quesadillas, water and some homemade cupcakes (with cupcake toppers to match the shirts)... and what would a homegrown party be without a "get your picture taken as a ______ board"? (remember the pirate? well we still had some wood). this one actually starts out upside down, after they had their pictures taken, the photo can be flipped and it will appear as if they are posing in a hand-stand with lotus variation...

the last thing i planned was the actual yoga and body balancing/stretching games. i prepped myself as the parties yoga teacher with a few kids yoga books, websites and library dvds (this, this, this and this) and merged all that with some things from my yoga teacher training... and with that we became a room full of roaring lions, trees in a forest, rising/setting suns, and butterflies with colorful wings, etc... the kids were fantastic. to change the pace we also planned a balancing game (sort of like musical chairs meets prehensile toes and the tree pose.) and the limbo. 

and of course there was a little happy birthday and a few candles, and lots of happy party fun.  namaste young yogis, namaste. :)

in the works

its friday! currently we're in the midst of a bit of last minute party preparations. a party this weekend to celebrate turning six. party time is quickly approaching and the house is full of activity — for instance, right now chuck is working on burning the silkscreen... the butter is being brought to room temperature on the counter for baking... limbo rock has been purchased and downloaded from itunes... and i'm going over my checklist every few seconds. (it should be an interesting friday night — and hopefully a very fun saturday afternoon.) happy weekend to you!

detoxing and daily dharma

my little greener-than-green wheatgrass elixir... a small glimpse of a bigger something that i embarked on a few days ago... starting this past weekend, as part of my yoga practice, i began doing a deep spring detox/cleanse... a whole spiritual-physical-mental experience meant to purify, change habits, restore balance, and good things of the like. :) 

it has been a pretty interesting past couple of days. especially the eating and drinking. i felt that our family ate very naturally and consciously as it was, however, as i've witnessed, there's always room to go a little deeper. room to strip away and freshen up a bit more. simplifying in a really pure and fresh way. going from a starting fast-day of only juices, water and herbal teas, to raw fruits and vegetables, to adding cooked vegetables, next adding legumes, nuts, whole grains, and eventually tofu, etc... (i'm sort of hovering now at the fruit/veggie/grains/legumes/nuts stage... it feels right for now, so i haven't added anything past that.) there have been lots of arugula salads, grated carrots, mugs of veggie broth, organic licorice tea and the occasional shot of wheatgrass. 

there are other aspects to this whole experience too, like fasting from news, computers, negative habits, etc... but obviously since i'm here typing for my blog, you can see that i've powered up the apple once again, but at least for now, with a little more awareness.  

ॐ

point of view

7:30 am adho mukha svanasana / downward facing dog

creating space

how great is it to have a little space? be it some space in time, some space in place, some space to just be... i am really grateful to have had a little space in time yesterday between an active day and evening, and space on my living room floor, of all places, in which to put my many books and papers out on. i started out sitting in the rocking chair with just my yoga notebook and a pen... with margaret right there, busy cutting some paper at her little table... my intention was to just review some yoga postures and notes in preparation for tuesday night's class and then create a cohesive twenty-minute pose-sequence to lead the class through... well margaret's activity naturally evolved and grew into something which had her deep in that place of imagination and led her into another room (where i believe there was "fishing at a pond" and "firing of her own clay pottery") — while my simple activity evolved into amassing a bigger stack of reference materials, outgrowing my nice spot in the chair, taking me to the floor. suddenly finding myself in the living room with a bit of quiet, and space for concentration. space for focus. space to create... nice, right?

...so now i'm here post-class (the sequence went well, although, not exactly as i outlined in my notebook — never getting around to parsvottanasana like i intended) and thinking back on my pre-class activity. flipping through the books, refreshing my brain of sanskrit names, making notes — all this too was aimed at creating space as well. assembling a series of poses that flow and work together well — to ultimately help all of us in class open up, expand and create space (and i'm hoping it did)...

pocket yoga

7:45 p.m. thursday evening, found me packing up like usual to head out the door. however in addition to my yoga mat, keys and bag, i was bringing along something extra... fringey, colorful, crafty, inspiration for all. every once and a while we are asked to prepare a talk on a yoga related topic to present and share with everyone — i've previously chosen to explore topics in the past like the "life of the buddha" and the "eight limbs of yoga". this time i decided to simply go with a small 4 line poem. it is something that i connected with early on in my yoga practice. i love how the words realate to the flow of breath, the in and out flow of the ocean's waves, and just the flow of existing in general... and then i envisioned offering each person their own little pocket sized copy of the poem. this called for some cardstock, x-acto knife, a little watered down paint, and a printout or two of the text. there wasn't much of a plan. but as i started working they evolved... and then came the hole-punching and touches of embroidery floss... until there was a stack of eight cards ready to go. portable yogic prose. the creative flow of the process too gave me more of a chance to think about these words and their meaning a little more and just a pretty good happy feeling.

many

...lit at the ashram in celebration tonight

...bundled and tied

...and stamped and tagged today

hanging around {part three}

a touch of crafty heirloom glitz

behold... my larger-than-i-ever-really-realized collection of aunt lena ornaments. it is not christmas without these. while five seems like a pretty big set, i know these are just a small sampling of the many, many, many handmade christmas tree balls created by my great-aunt lena over the years. we all have them — my siblings, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles and nonnie. i think as kids we each got our own personalized one for our first christmas (see the red one above? that is mine. type made out of pins is pretty cool, right?) they are made from little recycled bits of old christmas cards (i love that little illustration of the girl in the red scarf), wrapping paper, fancy beads, festive sequins (can you make out those
reindeer?) and pins. lots of pins.

so there you have today's quick yet sentimental installment of what's hanging around our tree. and today we too will be just hanging around the house. outside there was a bit of sleet which has now morphed into a fast falling snow. i'm wondering if i'll even be able to make it out to yoga tonight? perhaps i'll be staying put and getting cozy with my own holiday crafty to-do list? hmm, an evening of "letting go" or an evening of "let it snow"... i'll have to wait and see. i'm thinking happiness either way.

cool, collected and calm

a little collaboration in aromatherapy between margaret and i. we went out on a cool day. collected up some lavender sprigs from the yard. then stitched up and filled up some new calming eyepillows for each of us. i hope to get a chance to use mine in my yoga practice, while in the savasna. margaret is using hers a lot to get her dolls to relax. i think they like it. i know i do.

summer outakes (part 3)

dinner at the beach. one of my favorite things to do in the summer is take dinner down to the beach. usually on a sunny saturday or sunday night when the sun stayed out longer to keep the evenings a bit brighter. a super casual and relaxed type of together time... one night i ended up with this photo and i loved the combination of the earth on the shirt and the ocean in the background.

yoga pose. this photo was taken for an intended blog post. one summer night, i found myself, for a few brief seconds in this yoga pose during one of my more intense yoga classes. at the time the class was a lot of fun. we were venturing out into many poses that weren't in our normal routine... i think the next day i was so tired (totally wiped out) from these new gravity defying asanas that i couldn't find the energy to actually post here about it. so it goes... but here it is now, a nice reminder that i should try something new in my practice more often.

cutting flowers. a simple photo from one morning... a backyard bouquet in progress...

(summer outakes part one here)
(summer outakes part two here)
or just scroll down...

body work

part of this summer's routine has been that every other sunday afternoon, i gather up my three-ring binder, blank moleskine journal, text book, a nice pen, and my yoga mat to go to a 3 hour class in anatomy. it is part of a series of classes for yoga teacher certification which began back in may. i'm usually pretty excited, eager and all together to head out to class. today before class however, found me lying on the floor with my weekend morning beverage, listening to a fun craftsanity podcast interview with the very crafty mama amanda from soulemama while margaret and chuck were busy creating something wooden in the workshop downstairs... having a very easy, breezy type of sunday morning that effortlessly spilled into sunday afternoon, and let's just say that leaving the nest wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind. we were all just enjoying the sort of laid back moments that weekends are all about. then suddenly i realized that it was just 15 minutes until class would begin so i needed to stop the podcast half way, find my yoga pants, abandon the tea cup and very quickly gather up the supplies and get going... of course, once i got there, to the incense filled room, seeing the happy, relaxed faces of my friends in the class, i was ready for the "body" work to begin. fascia. tendons. muscle flexion. muscle extension. gastrocnemius. hamstrings. abdominus oblique. psoas. internal rotators. external rotators. deltoids. pectoralis. latissimus dorsi. levator scapulae. and so on...

so hours later, with my brain stuffed with fresh new words and information and my three ring binder stuffed with fresh new hand-outs i returned home. to rattle off to chuck and margaret (and to you all here as well) any new muscle name and fuction i could recall. and the ones i've forgotten? they are waiting in the binder for me to study and review. but maybe, first, before the books, there's still that crafty podcast that i never finished...

w is for wednesday

w is for week off.
a whole week without a blog post! where have i been? pretty much here and possibly a little bit there. let's see, since last wednesday's post there has been more summer cooking with tomatoes (more sauce), summer flowers blooming (our sunflowers are still coming with bursts of color around our yard), summer lawn care, summer roadtrip planning, summer afternoon yoga teacher training classes, summer mixed-cd making (you know, tunes for the road trip), and a bit of some sort of summer flu (i picked up a head cold or something that had me zapped of all my energy for a few days, but i think it's on it's way out, and luckily no one else in the house seemed to pick it up), and finally we hit the road and escaped for another summer getaway... be back soon (sooner than next wednesday, i promise)...

in the moment

last week the three of us went out on a local nature walk... some quiet time together outside to talk, explore, and just be... at some point in our journey this little energy-filled creature zipped in front of our path, and fortunately, as speedy as this darner was, with some apparent need to be going and doing something, he paused and hovered long enough right there at eye level, that i was able to focus, which seemed to take forever (let's see... blurry... spin the lens... almost in focus... spin the lens... blurry again —ok, too far, spin back the other way... etc...) and click in time to get his picture — exactly as he was, in mid-air, center of my concentration, in the moment...

meditation on sound

yoga class on a summer night

bottoms up

pomegranite juice... grapefruit juice... orange juice... apple juice... herbal tea... water... my menu for the day. every once and a while, inspired by my yoga practice, i will do a juice fast for a day. today was one of those liquid fillled days... while a bit of a challenging exercise, its a very interesting and meditative experience. starting with water first thing in the morning and then breaking into the colorful juice supply in the fridge, with a mug of tea thrown in for some warmth. i'll continue through the night and tomorrow morning i will ease back into normal eating again. as for tonight, the sun can't come up soon enough. cheers.

morning practice

this morning i was up early and i'm happy about that. sunday i'll be going to another all day yoga retreat that begins with a 6:30 a.m. meditation. 6:30 a.m.!!! so in order to try to adjust my internernal clock, i've been working on getting up a bit earlier each morning. today i had some quiet time with the birds to do some stretches and poses on my mat... just some quiet time... until the peanut gallery woke up. margaret shuffled in and immediately wanted to know which pose i was doing. i told her it was called the eagle. she sleepily studied what i was doing and suggested "maybe it would be better if you curled your toes under like this so they would be like tallans." (i actually found myself trying out her suggestion and then realized it was time to start the day). while i started breakfast margaret set herself up with my embroidery bag. usually she jumps right into the crayon basket, but today it was my threads and needles. i had promised margaret that today i would set her up with her own project on the embroidery hoop and she was ready to go. (as i type this she is already working away on a pirate flag design from sublime stitching - so cool). oooooh, and another cool thing...

while she was digging around in my bag of tricks she discovered this seahorse patch that i guess i finished last summer and never did anything with. maybe i could find a use for it as a patch or pocket somehow? perhaps.

so friday is off to a nice early start with a little bit of practice for everyone... i got to practice yoga and getting up early and margaret is getting to practice backstitching (i draw the line at teaching french knots).

happy friday!

anahata

tuesdays and thursdays. a steady weekly routine to get out and go to yoga class. last night i mixed it up a bit and added wednesday night mediation class. something a little different... and it turned out to be great. aside from the usual guidance "to let go" was something new... guidance to open the heart... to relax into the deep core of your spirit. with just this slight suggestion i had a whole different experience. who new that the mind could relax into the heart? i wanted to remember what i learned and to be able to encorporate it into my daily home practice. so as a bit of inspiration i felted up this little symbol. it represents the heart chakra - anahata - our center. i plan to keep it near my candle and yoga mat as meditation inspiration. to help me remember the heart.

sun, sun, sun

here it comes. while making the usual breakfast i noticed the morning sun make margaret's milk glass glow. while getting a few quiet minutes to do some yoga and meditation i noticed more sun on our plant and illuminating the trail of incense. and during playtime i noticed the warm sun again, this time shining through a leftover valentine's doilly and onto the floor in a lace-like design. i kept noticing the sun. or maybe i was really noticing the objects. ones that are here everyday, but today found themselves in the sun's light and earned a little more attention. it was nice to have the time today to see these shining moments and to capture them.

yoga night

om

deep inhale.
hold.
and slowly exhale, enjoying
the breath and the letting go.

the normal rhythm of the weekly routing was broken up tonight. different but exciting. i had been asked to join one of the beginning yoga classes, where i practice, for my first teaching experience. i was completely nervous all day. reviewing basic stretches and posses. i tried to keep myself distracted during the day (driving in the car listening to the andrew sisters with my grandmother helped, and talking to her about wabi-sabi, and hearing about the time the packard flipped over) at night i went to class. i went to the front of the room with my purple sticky mat, tried to let go, and a few deep exhales and forward bends later i was done. i was really thankful to my teacher for letting me have the experience. it felt great when it was done to have shared what i know with others and i think it all went well.

now i'm feeling a little more releaved and am excited for the rest of the week to tackle some projects on my to do list.

two hands

I took care of a lot of little things around here today. Monday type of things (trip to the bank, laundry, etc...). One unexpected thing was that I actually remembered to pick up a battery for my clock. It has been stuck at 2 minutes to 10:00 for over a month - ummmmm, way over a month. So I put in the battery as soon as I got home and off it went. I love this clock. The clock was made for me by my dad when I was in college. Recycling at it's finest. An old wooden wine box = new functioning clock... as long as there is a charged battery inside.

As I was resetting the clock with the correct time, I was reminded of my assignment for yoga class this week. I am to be aware of my two hands as much as I can. I've been working with this, thinking about my hands, noticing their actions and activity. I'm not sure if I've come to any conclusion yet, nonetheless I am sticking with it. Hoping I'll find out in class this week more about this hand awareness. But one thing I've noticed is that they are rarely doing the same thing at the same given moment. On the computer one hand uses the mouse while one hand rests on my chin, while washing dishes one hand holds the plate while the other does the scrubbing, even while knitting one hand holds one needle still while the other one gathers up the yarn in and out of loops. It is rare that they are doing the same action in unison. The one time that I've been aware of them doing the same activity together is while I was driving the car. Both hands simultaneously on the wheel in the same position. Now this is very much like the hands of the clock, right? Both going around telling time, but rarely stopping at the same number simultaneously.... I am so on my way to enlightenment.