Rut-Ro: How to Make Your Practice Come Alive Again

Yoga ruts.

They happen.

Just like ruts with everything else we have in life--whether it be our job, relationships, exercise, eating--you name it. It's hard to stay dedicated to the course when inspiration seems to be in hiding and our friend, WillPower,  just isn't strong enough to carry us on his back.

The good news is that the ruts don't last forever. The bad news is that they will happen again. Whether they are currently happening right now for you or not, one thing I do know about yoga and about life, is that it is filled with both peaks of lightness and inspiration and also valleys of apathy and disconnection.

So, how do you get from here to where you want to be?

1) Own it! Wherever you are right now in your practice---both on and off the mat--realize that it's exactly where you are supposed to be and that it's OKAY. It doesn't mean that you're a bad yogi because you don't feel like practicing. It doesn't mean that you are doing something wrong. It just means that you need to pause--find your breath--and take a little inventory inside your heart.

2) Change it up! If you are a regular at a yoga studio and take the same classes every week with the same teacher, switch it up! Try a new studio or a different teacher. I know for me, making myself get out of my comfort zone and trying something new often ignites an inner spark. Or maybe it will just allow you the opportunity to meet new yogis in your area and that alone is pathway for inspiration.

3) Challenge yourself. If you see yourself as a level 1 student and have only been taking level 1 classes, it might be time to bump it up! Who cares if you can't do hand stands in the middle of the room or even push up into a full backbend--often times being around students who are able to do those postures are inspiring but also it's inspiring to give it a shot yourself. You might just surprise yourself.

OR, if you see yourself as a Level 2 or 3 student who only goes to Level 2 or 3 classes, take a beginners class. I most often have my "ah-ha" moments either taking or teaching a basic level 1 yoga class. I personally wish we could do away with "levels" all together because for a lot of yogis it defines how "good" or "advanced" they think they are--when in reality, the most advanced yogi in the room is the one who is taking child's pose in the back.

4) Do an Instagram Challenge! Yep. You heard me right. For months and months I made so much fun of people who participated in those silly challenges. And then I found myself doing one to essentially "mock" those who did them (yes, totally un-yogic like I know) and what I found was that they truly motivated and inspired me to practice on a regular basis and to pay attention to what I thought I knew. It also forces you to be vulnerable. Nothing like posting a pic of yourself falling over or attempting a posture you can't even remotely do to demonstrate that there is no such thing as a perfect posture and that laughing at yourself is therapeutic.

5) Give yourself a break! If you practice 5 days a week, chill out. Take a few days off. Take a month off! Explore new hobbies or pick an old one back up!

6) Get on your mat. At home, in the park, on a hill--wherever. During the lackluster lull, and the constant battle over whether or not I feel like doing yoga--if I can just make myself get on my mat and show up, I at least feel better afterwards. I don't always get an instant spark of inspiration but it does make me feel good --in fact usually good enough to get on my mat again.

7) Read--about other people's yoga journeys. In general, all of us yogi's are seekers. And we all have a pretty great story of how we found yoga. Some of us were addicts who had lost our way, some of us are recovering perfectionists who had to learn to let go of control, some come from extreme religious backgrounds and found yoga as the path way to spirituality, and some found yoga through their distorted body images and eating disorders as the way to find healing and make peace with their bodies. Through whatever ways and however people found yoga--their stories always fascinate me and inspire me.

8) Just be patient. Learn to be still--to be okay with the stillness and the period of "blah-ness" that may be describing your yoga practice right now. Sit with the discomfort. Sit with the stillness. And it will teach you just as much as inspiration if you let it.

Soon enough, inspiration and motivation will find you again. And you will experience new joys and new adventures both on and off your mat.

What are some ways that you've found to motivate and inspire you when you've been at a standstill with your practice? Message me and let me know so I can share it with those who want to hear!

With Joy and Peace,
Jen



*This post was inspired by questions and comments I receive from YOU in my inbox. Got a question or comment about yoga? Email me and hopefully together we can dig deeper to gain a better understanding of certain subjects, find a solution, answer questions, and help others out by sharing it with them.*

why, hello 2015!

I've always loved New Years. I love setting new goals and dreaming big about what I want my year to look like. I've always set New Years Resolutions...maybe it's a first born-partially-type-A thing but there is something magical about it. I know most folks don't feel this way about New Years or about Resolutions so if you don't "feel" me on this one, I understand:) However, a few years ago instead of setting resolutions (which can be broken) I started setting "Intentions" which has a more gentle ring to it and doesn't quite bring about the same amount of shame, guilt, or fear of failure that "resolutions" does.

You can read about my past New Years Intentions here, here,  here and here.

So, what's on the agenda for 2015?

After spending the past week writing down ideas and intentions, I realized that the main thing I want to accomplish in 2015 is letting go of things that don't serve me. What does that mean? It means I want to do less of the things that make me feel guilty, sad, and bad about myself. And do more of the things that make me feel whole, attractive, smart, and good about myself. 

For starters, I want to:

eat more whole, real foods. less processed junk. my life for the past year has consisted of basically nothing but processed foods. i don't even eat salads anymore.

get rid of cable. because i rarely actually watch tv. sometimes i have it on for a noise factor but the 15 minutes i spend watching the Today show in the mornings before work doesn't justify the amount of  money i pay comcast each month. it makes me feel guilty.

read one article a week about my profession (occupational therapy). 

read one article a week about yoga as related towards specific impairments and deficits. 

spend less time on social media. 

listen to at least one podcast a week during my runs. 

spend more time on my mat and less time filming my mat for instagram. the challenges i participate in are great as far as they truly do encourage me and inspire me to get on my mat and to let go of the limitations i set for myself in my head. but they also take me away from being in the moment of my practice and make it more about the pose and less about the practice. if i'm really concentrating on my breath during my practice, instagram pics don't really fit in there. plus, sometimes it makes me feel fake. and less authentic. and i hate when i feel that way.

re-read my favorite classics... and read Moby Dick (for the first time).

call one person i love a week. if you know me then you know i don't text or call people. they text me and they call me and i might text or call them back--but i never initiate conversations. and it's not because i don't think about the people in my life or love them--it's because i hate the phone. there's something about it that makes me feel guilty and obligated and i just don't like it. and so i rarely think about it when i'm at my house. i'd rather play on the internet and read articles than return a text. but the people that are in my life don't operate like this or feel this way so it's important that i reach out to them and show them i love with by writing a text or making a call.

have more adventures. i've been talking about doing travel therapy for a year or so now. and although i do have a pretty good groove here in Jackson at the moment, my plans are to begin traveling this summer. unless of course the universe has different plans for me. but it's time for me to go and see and do and experience. and then maybe i'll come back and buy a house and settle down;)

work towards mastering the transition from bakasana (crow pose) to handstand and from handstand to crow pose every day. work on the tools that will allow me to make this transition possible (like core work and strength) so that maybe, just maybe, by the time 2016 rolls around i will be able to demonstrate that consistent, daily practice really does make a difference. and that hard work pays off.

keep a one sentence journal a day.

listen more.

talk less. 

Whatever your intentions or resolutions are for this new year, I encourage you to make them achievable. Make it less about the number on the scale and more about the way you feel in your own skin. Make it more about the people in your life and less about the things in your life. Set goals for your insides instead of just for your outsides. And be gentle with yourself. Learn to love the things you despise about yourself. Learn to let go of that which no longer serves you.

I'm working on a teaching schedule for the new year and waiting on a possible location to open up before I really announce it but I will be doing Pop-Ups again if a location can be provided. I'll also be subbing for some local studios and teaching private lessons. So if you are interested in any of those or have suggestions about locations for donation-based classes, then please don't hesitate to let me know.

I'm excited about this new year and all the unknown things we will learn together as we continue to walk this journey side by side.

So now I will ask you...what are your intentions for the new year? What will make you feel better about yourself and your life? Think of that list and then make those things your intentions. And think about the things that make you feel bad about yourself and do less of those. It really can be that simple if we'll allow it to be.

With so much love, gratitude, and admiration,

Jen

2014 in a nutshell: All about those transitions

2014 is just about to be history.

I've been sitting down for the past few evenings to really contemplate and reflect on the lessons 2014 has taught me and to think about what I would like to see manifested in my life for 2015.

The word that comes to mind the most when I think of 2014 is "transition." There were a lot of changes or transitions, if you will, that occurred in both my personal and professional life. I dealt with some of them really well and some of them terribly not so well:)

Several people I was close to moved away--which was a bigger transition than I thought it would be.

I graduated from occupational therapy school and transitioned from being a student to being a therapist.

I made the transition from living off of loans and the kindness of my parents to being fully self-supporting (that transition is one that I actually loved because it made me feel confident and truly good about myself and the ability to know that I truly can take care of myself all by myself).

I transitioned from being a yoga practitioner to being a teacher again (and of course I will always be a yoga student and hopefully practitioner).

I made lots of transitions into new work settings since I work as a PRN therapist. I had to learn the transition from going to paper charting to new computer systems, new protocols, new billing systems, new co-workers, new buildings--new everything.

I transitioned from being just a sister to becoming a sister-in-law as my brother, Brian, got married in June (first big wedding for my family).

When relating all this to the yoga mat, I immediately think of the transition going from downward facing dog to stepping your right (or left) foot in between your hands at the front of the mat for either a low lunge or to come up to a standing pose like warrior one. Have you ever noticed how hard that is and yet how easy we have in our minds that it is? Another transition is going from a standing forward fold to stepping your right and left foot back to plank. Or how about going from triangle pose to half moon? (Geesh--I'm going to stop thinking about these transitions now before I keep going and overwhelm myself. ha!).

Those transitions, for those of us who have practiced yoga for awhile, don't look hard. In fact, in my brain they don't "feel" hard. But when I actually go to do them, they require more effort and skill than I realize. The reasons that make me realize they are hard and difficult are that I often times lose my balance when performing them. I don't step back quite far enough, or I step back in the same plane as my front foot and falter. Or I step back too far and my hip flexors hate me;) I also fall over quite often when going from triangle to half moon.

These transitions take a lot of strength, endurance, balance, patience--basically skill, to perform them with ease. They don't just 'happen'. They require me to be mindful and to follow my breath with intense concentration all the while not taking myself too seriously and allowing myself to be fully present in the moment.

The other "real life" transitions I mentioned earlier also require the same amount of skill to perform with ease and grace.

And I performed some of them with zero amount of ease and with grace no where to be found.

But you know what? It was okay. I learned a lot from some of my meltdowns. I also re-learned a lot from some of my "falls".

I think we basically learn the same lessons over and over again and I feel like each time we learn them again, we're able to handle them with a little more grace and a little more skill. 

To make this more personal, I'll be more specific: 

I learned (again) that it's pointless and futile to take things personally because it (98% of the time) just isn't about me.

I learned that some people aren't meant to be in your life forever--and really, that all the people in my life won't be here forever. And that's okay. That's just how it goes.

I learned that the only difference in "bad days" and "good days" is my perspective. And that I have the power to make the "bad days" turn to "good days" if I really want them to be.

I learned that I'm more fearful than I thought I was and that finding my teacher voice again was not as easy as I thought it would be.

I also relearned that the important things, concepts, and people are WORTH all the extra home-work, long hours, and hard conversations that I put into them.

I learned that I have a LOT to learn and a LONG way to go. But the reason I know I didn't totally "fail" all my transitions this past year is because when I look at my life this is what I see: 

Beautiful groups of people who love me and support me, a loving, gracious, and encouraging family, a career I love with several jobs I look forward to going to, fantastic co-workers, a fabulous little home, my yoga mat and all my yoga friends and teachers, love, laughter, warmth, hope, and peace of mind.

And that is when I realize that all those transitions allowed me to experience those things in a fuller way and enhanced those aspects of my life and gave me the strength to bring my right foot to the top of the mat and to rise up and answer the call to teach again.

I can honestly say that I'm grateful for all the pain that came along with each of those transitions. They made me stronger and gave me more courage. They made my line of vision even clearer and peace of mind greater.

Who knows what 2015 will bring. I bet it will bring about a lot of the same. and maybe a lot of different.

I pray that I will be open to all the possibilities that present themselves.

I pray for wisdom and clarity and balance and strength for the upcoming year.  

Whether you are a close friend of mine or just a distant acquaintance, thank you for being a part of my "transition" and for sticking by my side and loving me through it all whether by coming to a pop-up yoga class or by leaving a kind comment or being my shoulder to cry on and lending your listening ears--THANK YOU! 

You made each of my transitions worth it. 

With deep love and affection,

Jennifer

P.S Due to the length of this wordy blog, I"ll be writing another blog piece about my intentions and teaching opportunities for 2015! I'm working on my January schedule NOW!

Holiday Update

Greetings, sweet friends and fellow yogi's!

I thought I would take a few moments this morning before all the busyness and hustle-bustle of packing and figuring out where I'm going for Thanksgiving begins, I wanted to give you all a quick update on all the happenings in my world and my current schedule.

As most of you know, the Pop-Up yoga has come to a little halt due to the time change and coldness (for outside venues at least) and I have yet to find a big open space (with no or little cost) to hold more Pop-Ups in. BUT, they are not gone for good and if you happen to have any suggestions on where I can continue to offer free community Pop-Up classes, please let me know. Whether it be your own personal offering of space or a corporate space, I'm down for all ideas. If my living room were just a tad big bigger, I would do it here:)

I also want to thank ALL of you who participated in the October Pop-Up Yoga month. I had so much fun and learned so much as I am attempting to find my voice again as a teacher. Outdoor yoga isn't something I've done much of in the past due to conditions (whether it be too hot, too loud, no wall, etc) but I must say that practicing outside regularly for that month was just about the greatest thing ever. I miss it everyday. In fact, due to our inconsistent weather here in Mississippi, I got to practice outside earlier this week and it made my heart swell with joy and gratitude.

What I got to see and experience with the Pop-Up Yoga was so very personally fulfilling and touching and I felt so honored to just be a part of this wonderful community of people who truly do aspire to make a difference and to live out their truth while desiring to learn more about themselves and who they are in relation to the bigger picture.

I had the privilege of teaching people who had never set foot on a yoga mat before and assisted some folks with more advanced practices than my own. I got to encourage the overly flexible to strive for strength and balance in their bodies and for the supper tight and strong folks, I got to teach them how to open up, let go, and relax in order for them to find some flexibility. I worked with people who had rheumatoid arthritis, torn rotator cuffs, fibromyalgia, herniated discs, back pain, knee pain, and a plethora of other disabilities and impairments and I got to use my knowledge of anatomy and physiology through the lens of my therapeutic background and framework into teaching them and helping them discover movement without pain!

Each person touched my heart with their presence. Each person gave me affirmation that I am on the right path.

What you may or may not know about me is that stepping back into the role of a yoga teacher wasn't something I had planned to do nor something that I ever thought I wanted to do again. It's a huge responsibility and practicing yoga and teaching yoga are two totally different skill sets. You can have an amazing, advanced yoga practice and be a terrible yoga teacher--or vice versa, you can be an amazing yoga teacher who may not necessarily have an advanced practice--but that doesn't mean you can't get your students into postures you can't do yourselves.

When I realized that I felt the call again to teach yoga, there was a lot of fear and self doubt. There was a lot of, "but I don't really know if I want to do this and what is this going to look like if I don't teach just studio yoga?" going on in my head but I knew I had to listen to my inner truth and just take that leap of faith to follow this calling. I, of course, wouldn't have done it without all the many people in my life that show up for me on a regular basis to tell me, "You can do this! You were born to do this! This is your gift to the world, Jen." To all of those people (you know who you are) thank you. Thank you for encouraging me, inspiring me, supporting me, and loving me enough to make me get out of my own comfort zone.

But back to the present moment--tomorrow is THANKSGIVING!!! Which means that Christmas is in 28 days!

I have several things I want to talk about in regards to the holidays and how I want us all to be kind to ourselves as we embrace what is normally a very busy, chaotic, guilt-ridden season but I think this post is long enough and I shall just have to write more over the weekend.

Since the time change and season change, I've spent the last month working and focusing on my home practice and learning to find the balance with both of those things.

I worked a lot over the past 3 weeks in order for me to be able to take off the rest of this week and I'll be doing the same in December thanks to the beauty of PRN work.

I'm still contemplating and discussing some ideas with a few folks about what my yoga schedule is going to look like in the new year and at teaching possibilities and I will let all of you know what that looks like as soon as I get it figured out.

In the mean time, I am totally open to teaching more Pop-Ups for the month of December. Whether it be your living room or your office or community event, please don't hesitate to contact me with your ideas. Most of them will have to be in the evening due to my work schedule but sometimes that works better for people anyway. I want to make myself available to my precious little community so please let me know how I can be of service. 

My prayer for you all during this coming weekend and next month is that you will choose to find the joy in your lives. Regardless of family drama, work stress, kid stress, busy schedules, and full bellies my hope is that you will give yourself the gift of perspective and be determined to stay focused on seeing the joy and the gratitude in each moment.

Thank YOU for being a source of joy in my life.

With humbleness and thankfulness in my heart,

J Nan

Doris Lane

Yesterday I, along with about 45 other immediate family members, buried my grandmother. She was my dad's mom and she passed away early Thursday morning at the age of 91 years old after battling several different types of cancers and illnesses for over 15 years.

My grandmother lived in Weakley County Tennessee the majority of her life, where she raised 7 children and was the wife of a dairy farmer. After my grandfather passed away (whom I never had the privilege to meet) she moved back to the sleepy little town of Dresden, TN where she started her 47 year career at the Weakley County Courthouse serving as the deputy clerk and secretary/administrative assistant until she retired at the age of 83.

My grandmother's name was Doris Nan  Davis Nanney and she lived on Doris Lane for the remaining 42 years of her life.

Most of you may already know this but my Dad was the middle child of 7 children (as I mentioned above) and grew up milking cows until he went to college (where he describes himself as a C+ business student) and then appropriately made the decision to join the Navy and fly airplanes and in turn, the Navy paid my dad's way through medical school. Before my Dad decided to go to medical school, he wanted to be a child psychologist (hence where my overly analytical nature comes from). All of this is to explain how we ended up in Meridian, MS and the rest of our very large immediate family all in Tennessee (mostly Memphis and the Dresden area). Meridian has a naval air station and so during my dad's active duty days, we ended up in Meridian for him to serve some time at the navy base and ended up staying there when he got out of the navy.

All of this is really to tell you that we lived about 6-7 hours away from my grandmother growing up. Which as a child, felt more like 24 hours.

We didn't get to see her much because my mother was raising 4 children (7 and under) and my dad worked all the time.

We made the annual trek to Dresden at least once a year for Thanksgiving and every so often, we would go up and visit during the Summer.

My grandmother, whom I call "Grandmama Nanney" was a tall woman. She was tall and thin and dressed like a working woman in suits and skirts. Which was vastly different from my other grandmother (my mom's mom) who always dressed in wind-suits and warm-up outfits.

The things I remember most about my very limited time with my grandmother are these...

She never complained. I never once heard her mention a word that could have been perceived as negative. And if anyone EVER had a reason to complain about life's difficulties, it would have been her. Her husband died and left her with 7 children to finish raising when she was 49 years old, she started experiencing different aliments, one of which was breast cancer which she miraculously fought and won...and she buried her eldest daughter in 1993 (I was 11) from Melanoma. Money was always an issue and yet she never complained. She never asked for more.

During our visits, I would relish the times I spent with her in the early mornings because she and I shared a common trait of being early risers. She would be busy baking her ever famous apple pies from scratch in the kitchen with coffee brewing while I would sit at the kitchen table watching the sunrise in the distance from the window over the farmland. The first thing she would always say to me when I walked into the kitchen would be, "Good morning, my child! Look what a beautiful day the Lord made for us."

My grandmama wasn't a messy or dramatic woman. She wasn't into gossip and she never needed to know what was going on in her little town although I'm sure, from working at the court house, she knew absolutely everything that went on in that sleepy little village.

My grandmother only spoke words of praise and positivity.

She held her head high with dignity and grace until her last breath.

It was only in the last year that I knew my grandmother was truly getting sicker because when I saw her last Thanksgiving and asked her how she was doing, she replied, "I'm not feeling too well these days." And that was the FIRST time, during her decade long battle with leukemia, that I ever heard her express distress.

My grandmother lost most of her vision years ago from macular degeneration and she's weighed about 80 pounds for the last year on her 6 foot tall frame. She had hearing difficulties and her systems have been failing her for awhile. But you would have never known any of that from talking to her.

I got to talk to my grandmother for the last time last Saturday after I finished working a long shift at St. Dominics. She told me she had seen better days but that she was hanging in there and was happy to be seeing my dad, mom, sister, and nephew as they were visiting her. She asked me how my day was at work and we talked about how much she loved her physical therapist because he made her laugh.

The last thing my grandmother told me was that she loved me and that she was proud of me.

Which is exactly the way she's ended every conversation I've ever had with her.

I'm not an overly emotional person. I don't cry a lot. And I hate crying in public. But I think I might have shed more tears yesterday than most of the people that attended that funeral. Because although I am so happy and relieved that my grandmother passed over to her forever home in peace and is no longer suffering, the permanence of death and it's powerful sting are still so incredibly painful.

My grandmother taught me how to handle life and disappointing situations without ever saying a word to me about them--she taught me about unconditional love, support, loving-kindness, generosity, how to live with grace and how to be strong in the face of adversity through the way that she lived her life. The only expectation I knew my grandmother had of me was to work hard and enjoy God's blessings. Because she wanted me, and the rest of us, to be happy and to know peace.

The legacy my grandmother left us with inspires me to be the best possible version of myself while here on earth. Her life and death--and their meaning and significance leave me with a torch to pass on to future generations. It's a torch of hope and encouragement and love --knowing that if we truly have the support from our families and friends, that anything is possible. We truly can do anything we want--we can make all our dreams come true. Because sometimes, we need others to believe in us until we learn to believe in ourselves.

And although my grandmother and I never did any yoga together, she is truly the embodiment of what doing yoga off your mat looks like.

May I live my life in a way that will continue to make my grandmother proud of me.

May we all live our lives in a way that will make others proud of us---but most of all, that will make us proud of ourselves.

Happy Sunday.