Mission Monday: Tadasana

So excited to get back into mission mondays! If you are new to the greatness of mission mondays, they are weekly prompts intended to get you connected with life, creative, active, thoughtful and otherwise fully living.
They are fun, easy and completely free.

Join us! Become part of the joy rebel army! The first mission monday is in the video above-I hope you enjoy it. I've opened up comments for you to share any thouhts or experiences you have and if you play along on twitter, please use #missionmondays so we can find each other.

Have fun ya'll!

Let's be the wild and unruly

In all my moves, in all the places I've seen and lived and driven through and stopped at gas stations to buy postcards, the spaces that are wide open speak to me the most.





I live in a city and I appreciate the opportunities and conveniences it gives me and my husband but heart is in the pasture that stretches out my parent's back door.



It is in the trickling creeks that snake through texas farmland, it is in long stretches of highway. It is in the places that seem brown and dry and barren, but are actually intricate and beautiful and rich with life (if you slow down and look closely).





My heart is in a sky that bowls over my head, that pounds the earth with hail and thunder. My heart is in old places, worn places, places that are untidy. My heart is in the stories of life, those stories told in smooth rock and the dirt underneath our feet.





In the same way, I tend to be drawn to the untidy and imperfect souls in life (well...aren't we all a little untidy and imperfect?). I have no need or want for airbrushing and perfect manners. I have no patience with pretense. I, frankly, won't notice the brand of your shoes or your makeup or the number of friends you have on facebook.

I will notice if you are kind and if you are genuine. I will notice if you cry and I'll hold your hand and then try to make you laugh. I will notice what we can teach each other. I will notice the depth in your eyes...and I'll notice if those eyes are empty or closed off and I will push against that, probing for what's underneath. I will see beauty in your laugh lines, in the shape of your hands, in the way you carry yourself.

And when I mention those things, I will know that more often than not, you will dismiss that beauty of yours and that will make me a little sad because imperfect is the most beautiful.

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."-Leonard Cohen


My dream is that one day, we all find our unruly beauty. It's when we see our beauty that we can share our grace, our compassion, our passion. Adore yourself. See the silliness in the way you cry, appreciate where you are stubborn. Within all of us, there are edges to be refined but never lose the essence of your soul.

I would not be who I am if I didn't cry at the thought of animals getting hurt, if I didn't challenge the status quo, get overly picky about cleaning the floors and have a serious aversion to eggs.

Be who you are. Love your stories and your wrinkles and your idiosyncrasies. Perfect is NOT beautiful.

REAL IS BEAUTIFUL.


P.S. Move your body and get reconnected to your wild and unruly self in my e-course, MOVE: a body journey. The next session starts February 27th and registration is open. You can see more details and sign up here.

artsy fartsy tuesday: strong

It's true.

(Btw, artsy fartsy tuesday will be moving to later in the week starting next week. This is due to starting up Mission Mondays again and I know I won't have time to do back to back posts).

Awesomeness you may have missed, awesomeness to come {a weekly wrap up}

winter hydrangeas in my neighborhood

This post from Kate Courageous brought me to tears. Passages like this: It makes me weep in sorrow for too many days spent in front of a computer screen, eating soup from a can in fewer than ten minutes, snapping at the people I love, thinking anything is less important than…

Or this: I weep with gratitude for my living, breathing life. For the air in my lungs. For all of the pictures that have been taken of me in which I smiled into a camera,not knowing what would be ahead. Not worrying about it. Not anticipating the pain of life. Weeping for all of my second chances, and third chances, and tenth chances.

They bring us back to what's important, don't you think?

My amazing friend Allison, who I met and have become great friends with because I commented on her blog (true story) wrote an amazing piece for Roots of She. She is so brave. Please read it.
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Of course, the amazingness that can be found on pinterest-you can see my latest finds of beauty and color here.

I was blessed to have my second article posted over Elephant Journal. This is a big deal and a thrill for me!

I also wrote about wisdom, not applause and about why it's so important to me that we MOVE, that we make exercise fun again.
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And lastly, as I was lounging around in my pj's this morning (who am I kidding...it's my one day off, I'm still in my pj's), a little bird whispered in my ear. Sometimes, I'm not too sure about what this bird is whispering. Sometimes it just feels right and I immediately know it's the right next step for me.

I'm bringing back mission mondays. What are mission mondays? They are a weekly mission of joy, love and fun. They are designed to get you moving, creative, engaged and grateful. Most importantly, they are designed to be fulfilling, not a chore. You can see examples here, here and here. I put missions down for awhile and at the time, I felt so dried up and without offerings. 


I think I needed to realize some dreams, figure out internal things, be informed by life a little bit more and now it feels right to bring them back.


You'll see the first new mission a week from tomorrow (Jan 30th). I'm so excited to see where these missions take us. I do hope you'll join me!

Creating good habits {and a rainbow sherbet sky}

This was my view as I drove into work this morning. Isn't it gorgeous? What I love about this photo are the solid lines of reality-the power lines and the row of street lights-completely saturated by sherbet colors.

Morning greetings like this make me happy and extra grateful.

Life is good when you look for good. Not because tough things stop happening but because your perspective broadens and see those bad things for what they are: bad things. Not BAD THINGS that will topple mountains and destroy worlds and usher in a new era of evil. They are just bad things.

And, like everything in life, they are not permanent.  They will soon work themselves out or they will change or something else will happen and all through it, there are dog kisses, found money, kindness from strangers and rainbow sherbet skies.

I remember openly scoffing at that idea when I was in my early 20's and dealing with a young marriage (with my now ex-husband), depression and trying to live up to the standards of being a military wife (and failing miserably at that).

Now I'm the pollyanna touting it. Craziness.

Life has changed a lot in that 15 years.

For anyone that maybe is struggling to see the good, who desperately would like for life to not feel so combative, all I can say is this: keep trying.

Noticing the good instead of the bad is a habit, just like everything else. And you've had years upon years-maybe even decades-to develop the bad news habit.

It may take a while for a habit of seeing the good to soak in but trust me, it will.

It took me years. Being the barge through life kind of gal that I am, I generally don't deal well with the idea of something taking YEARS to change.

But here's the thing: change can be permanent. You can actually REWORK your brain. You can change yourself at a CELLULAR level-where you genuinely change how you think, how you see things and how you act in life. I know because I've done it.

The issue is often we want to see visible changes much sooner than those changes can actually happen...and they can't happen immediately and stick because we are changing those cells and neural pathways.

I realize now that it's unrealistic to want immediate change. Immediate change never sticks. I don't want that kind of change anymore because it's not real. It's empty.

I say it's time to change something else-our ideas on how growth and positive habits are supposed to develop in our lives.

It's all about working a little bit every day to solidify the beneficial habits more than feed the ones that don't feel good.

Then one day, when you least expect it, those cheeseball sayings that you rolled your eyes at will suddenly make sense because they will be TRUE to you.

Don't give up. Keep working on those habits. And marveling at those rainbow sherbet skies.

P.S. I'm so honored to have my second article published over at Elephant Journal! Please check it out.

If you are visiting for the first time after reading that article, you can find a little more about me on my ABOUT PAGE. I also have a wonderful e-course all about movement and feeling good in your body. The next session starts in late february-details here. I hope you'll join!

artsy fartsy tuesday: wisdom, not applause

Another from my art journal...

I've been praying a lot lately. And woven through the gratitude, more often than not, is this request.

I think it's natural that we humans need recognition-and I think it's important that we get it.

But I know me. I was the new kid a lot, the outcast a lot, the odd one a lot. I craved attention. I wanted to be part of the popular crowd.  To the point that I made decisions that went against my better judgement so that I would 'fit in'.

Most of this I've worked through. Therapy, study, research, good friends, time, age.

But I know the need can still be there-the need to be part of the popular group.

I want to make sure that when I doing something, I'm doing it for the right reasons.

So I prod my internal motivations carefully to ensure that I am doing something, not for any popularity it may gain me, but because I truly believe it's the right thing to do.

And I pray for wisdom and for humility.

Let's make exercise fun again

I have been reinvigorated lately around the issues of our bodies and movement and health.

There are many in the blogsphere, on facebook and various other sources fighting the good fight around how media portrays women, body image, negative advertising and the like. Articles like this, videos like this.

I feel a change coming on in how we view our bodies and I truly believe that the voices we hear around these issues indicate a ground swell towards permanent change.

Another session of MOVE is upon us-starting at the end of February and my intention around this course is for it to be small voice among the many that support healthy bodies, healthy self image, healthy lives.

This course is not an exercise routine. We don't focus on losing weight, calorie counting or the like. In fact, the inspiration for this course has nothing to do with toned arm muscles or flatter abs.

My cousin had a daughter with a severe form of Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I say 'had' because her daughter died in 2010 after 13 years of living with her disease.  Haley never walked, never lifted her head on her own, never talked. She needed machines to help her breathe her entire life. Considering her severe form of the disease, it's actually somewhat miraculous she lived as long as she did.

Still. 13 years of constant care, of never knowing the joy of running through the grass on summer evening. Never knowing the fun of diving off a diving board into a pool. Never even experiencing a simple walk in the park.

Within days of my mom letting me know of Haley's passing, this e-course was born. Because her leaving this world made crystal clear the immense privilege and gift movement is. A privilege that I have often taken for granted or turned into a chore.

I wanted to get back to moving for the joy of it and I want to share that experience with as many people as possible. Not to make your body fit into some crazy media ideal, but to give yourself the gift of movement.

Registration is open and details are here. I am especially excited for this session because I will be revamping the format and some of the videos, breathing fresh life into this course.

I hope you will join me and give yourself the gift of the movement. Let's make exercise fun again!



P.S. Want to share this gift on your blog or website? I am available for interviews or guest posts. Please contact me for details!