As we head into this winter season and begin a new year, it's important to take some time to get quiet, to rest and to reflect on all that has happened this year(as difficult as that may be)and to take the lessons of 2020 along with hope and intention into the new year. 

I'd like to offer you two free practices to help you do just that - a Restorative Yoga class and the Journal Reflection below.

Barn’s burnt down

now I can see

the moon

~Mizuta Masahide, 17th Century Japanese Poet

As I sit to reflect on what has been a year of tragedy and loss on a global scale, this haiku keeps coming to mind. As always with haiku there’s so much contained in these few simple lines. These lines reflect the wisdom that is at the heart of the yoga & Buddhist traditions - that the nature of life is impermanence and that if we can be accepting, stay open-hearted and pay deep attention through the never ending flow of change, loss and transformation, we can gain the clarity, insight and wisdom to help us move forward. Of course there is nothing easy or simple about that process.

There is also a sense of hope in this haiku - life goes on after loss and despite the inherent suffering of being alive, life is filled with incredible beauty and mystery. It brings to mind that strange paradoxical feeling I get when really looking at the moon- of feeling of being incredibly small,  insignificant and finite, while at the same time part of something enormous, universal and infinite.

We'll take inspiration from this haiku in our New Year's reflection - staying open-hearted and accepting as we attend to the ways impermanence has touched our lives this year. We'll seek out  any wisdom, insight or inspiration that we can take from our experiences in 2020 into our aspirations for the coming year.

Journal Reflection

*Begin by coming to a comfortable seated posture in a chair or on a cushion. Take some deep breaths in through the nose and exhaling with a deep sigh - becoming more present with sensation in your body with each inhale and letting go of tension with each exhale.

*Allow your breath to come to a natural flow and spend some time meditating on the sensation of breath in your body.

*Take some time in silence to think back on 2020. You might go month by month or just see what events, feelings and memories arise. If you keep a journal you could just read back through the year. Use the practice of deep conscious breathing to stay present with wahtever emotion arises.

* Now begin to write about:

1. What "Barns burnt down" in your life this year? What loss or change did you experience?

2. What joy,  beauty, mystery or connection did you experience this year?

3. What new insight, wisdom or clarity have you gained this year? *Important note - The new year is a very arbirary marker of time. We are all still very much in the midst of this pandemic and it's ok to have no answers. As the poet Rilke says, we can "live the questions" until an answer comes.

4. What hope or aspiration do you bring into the new year?