Finding the Light

I am falling off the blogging wagon. My manic-ness has slowed down and I am not up at all hours cranking out studio tasks. I have been in a funk the past few days. I am struggling with balance. We had a family filled weekend with a ballet recital, a rainy Sunday matinee and guests from out of town. I didn't squeeze out any time for myself and I can feel it. I am struggling with channeling any positive energy and falling flat in my spiritual quest. I am having trouble connecting.

Where do these funks come from?

It is Saturday afternoon and after continuing in my funk all week, I decided to do something about it. The yoga blitz week starts tomorrow. I will be teaching 9 classes this week. I decided if I am going to ask people to up their commitments, I had better renew my own. And to survive it, I need something for myself. I have decided to attend class for 13 days straight. I am day 4. 2 of the days I will have to practice on my own, but the others I am going to class. I need it. I have been more focused on other limbs of yoga and my asana practice kind of cruises steadily along, and I haven't really felt the need to practice, REALLY practice, not just do a few poses here and there until I realized it is possibly contributing to my unbalanced thought processes lately. My husband and I have been NON-simpatico and I feel like I am drowning in tasks - AGAIN. I knew what I needed to do to reach out to him, but I was stubborn and wanted him to do it first. I read my Meditations from the Mat this morning and new what I needed to do - "If you want to end darkness, you can't beat it with a baseball bat, you have to turn on a light." I apologized and vowed to be a better wife. As I read further, I came across a passage I had seen before. Lately this has been happening to me. I will read something and know I have seen it before, or maybe heard it in the context of a yoga class. I think this quote was also in my fellow yoga teacher's blog.

"We do not need to enter a showdown with our self-destructive behavior, nor can we deny its existence. We must simply come to know it, and move on. We learn to focus wholeheartedly on positive behavior."

I have to increase the amount of time, energy and thinking I spend on positive behavior. Period. So after I came home from yoga suddenly overwhelmed with being in charge of 2 high-energy four year olds while hubby and eldest are camping and the seemingly long list of tasks that await me WITH those high energy ones in tow: going to Costco, preparing for my mother-in-law's birthday party, finishing the yard work (what the heck do you do with the freakin' pile of compost that stinks to high heaven?), taking the girls swimming, and doing the final tasks for the blitz week, I re-evaluated. I took the girls to the art show at Chalet (Ivy was 1 inch away from taking out an entire jewelry display), bought myself my first piece of jewelry by local artist Lucy Valderhaug (my old sex ed teacher) ( a bit of a rush decision as Ivy had moved on the wooden figurines), bailed on Costco ( so not into it) and instead let them pick out nail polish at Walgreen's and polished our nails. They are beyond exhausted and asleep and I treated myself to a People magazine, a blog, and the celebration of little successes. I deserve it. If you don't pause to celebrate the good stuff, why bother teaching about it?