Metta meditation and Power Vinyasa Flow.

What a day.

It started off with my Grandfathers funeral. My grandfather was an old, old man at 98, and had lived a pretty cool life in many ways. He was at Pearl Harbor. He was a part of the Easter Morning invasion of Okinawa. He worked for Ford for over 50 years, meeting Henry Ford himself. When you think about how the world changed in his lifetime its fairly mind blowing. He married four women, sadly abandoning one and outliving two and going and dying on the 4th one. He adopted two children, outliving one of them. Anyway. He lived all of 3 miles from us, but I hadn't seen him in about three? years? Unfortunately his "new" wife was the sort who kept him all to herself and was a pretty, well, terribly awful person.  No way around it, one could maybe even say she was a tad evil? Sadly it meant that "our" side of the family didn't really get to see him as she was younger, sharper, and a lot meaner than him, and it was her way or the highway. Now, no matter what happened in the last decade of his life, ....standing in front of a casket is awful. Seeing your Mom hurt is worse. So, the morning was hard. I was so proud to see my Mom's million friends turn out for her ~ truly when you talk about "loving kindness" you could be talking about my Mom, personified. So ~ perhaps my Grandfather could never be a terribly good or loving man.....but seeing my Mom surrounded by her good and loving family, and her good and loving friends, made me ache with gratitude. We can't control many things in life, but man do I want to do better with the things that I can control.

Anyway. I raced straight from the funeral to our 5th weekend of Yoga. Nate went straight home to take the kids away for the weekend, to visit one of our best friends parents who was just diagnosed with an aggressive stage 4 cancer up in Stroudsburg. I hadn't been overly emotional at the funeral, but I walked into class and quick changed from my formal clothes into my yoga clothes, and walked right into a discussion on meditation...and right into a walking mediation. Left hand on sternum, right over left, walking heel toe, focusing on drawing energy from the earth through the feet, measured pace, eyes down ~ and suddenly I just couldn't stop the tears. I don't know what it was. Its so hard to see the ones you love hurt, and its so hard to not be able to right certain wrongs, no matter how angry, or sarcastic, or comforting or silly you try to be ~ some things are just wrong, and some things just take some pain, and then some acceptance. And that is always a hard realization, especially for one (like me) who really likes to cling to the illusion of having ways to control things, be them emotions or situations or outcomes. Sometimes the reality of all that we can't control has to smack people like me in the face, and its never a pleasant feeling.

Anyway. The rest of the day was by far my favorite day to date. It was our power vinyasa flow day. I've been testing myself lately in my power flow classes lately. Do I know whats next? Could I cue it? Do I remember that whole sequence on this side? One of Baron Baptiste's original students who trained with him for years has a studio near here. Training there was an option for me.......and while I do think that this is the type of yoga I may well end up teaching a lot of (as its probably the type of yoga I practice the most) I didn't want it to be the ONLY type of yoga I knew how to teach. The thing that I like about my program is its focus on learning how to teach beginners and the way that it exposes us to so many types of yoga (yin, restorative, ashtanga, prenatal, Iyengar, Kripalu, etc etc) and allows us to grow and continue our studies from there. I continue to be endlessly grateful that the teacher who made me fall in love with power yoga 15 years ago at Mitch's gym is now my mentor and still teaches the most ridiculous, wonderful, sweat inducing, creative, and you-never-know-whats-coming-next classes I've ever been to. If I could teach anything LIKE that someday I would be in heaven. I don't "only" want to know the formulaic routine of the Baptiste or the Beryl Bender Birch method. (When I read that she said "I'm Beryl Bender Birch I don't DO hip replacements!......after my hip pinning surgery I was turned off to her. Is that okay to admit? Like, I don't DO arrogance, okay BERYL?????)

I'm rambling. I went straight from yoga to a pedicure and nearly moaned at the delightful hot stones and my favorite esthetician massaging my legs and feet at 5:30 after a day that started on my feet at 6:30 and never let up.  After a happy hour power flow class last night at 5:30, the stress of packing the kids for their first ski experience and an overnight, the sitter being 10 minutes late this morning, packing up for yoga, forgetting to pack myself food and then practicing power vinyasa flow from 12:30 till 4:30, well, it was a long day. Coming home to a silent house was sad. For like 3 SECONDS!!!! Then it was AWESOME! I made myself a huge dinner of soup and quesadillas while I watched the first football game, caught up on texts and voice mails, and started getting excited for the Eagles. I am already in my ultra sexy flannels, my jaw hurts from that whole not crying/too much emotion/ thing, and while I had visions of writing another yoga paper I may just blow it off and treat myself to some time where I don't do anything but sit back and enjoy the show.

Metta meditations. Loving kindness. Isn't it a beautiful thing to wish yourself, your friends, and everyone? Even the ones who are a tad arrogant or evil? I've got a good handle on the first two. I love my friends and family and thankfully I've learned how to love myself and my flaws, even if I practice that love wildly erratically and constantly need to be correcting my course. Obviously I have a bit of work to do on the third one! Baby steps towards wishing the evil well. Baby steps.