Coaching

“Read more books” was one of the goals that I wrote down in my journal on January 1st, 2020.

I didn’t have a particular number in mind, I didn’t clarify the goal by saying I needed or wanted to read a book or two a month. I knew that if I put a specific number down on the piece of paper stating my goal that I would hold myself accountable to it and then that arbitrary number would warp into a stressor. No longer would reading more books be enjoyable, it would turn into a to-do list item. I am not the person that needs MORE to-do list items!

“Read more books” was open-ended. It allowed me freedom within the goal to let life happen, to allow stumbles and falls. It gave me permission to pick books at random, some long, some really short.

When I look back at the list of books that I read in 2020 what I notice is that I read more books for pleasure, rather than for business development. Which is a beautiful switch for me. Another goal of mine at the beginning of the year was setting the intention to honor my downtime. All too often when I would previously find free time in the day I would fill it with more business marketing or content creating. It’s hard as a small business owner to create the boundaries around work but we all need to find ways to recharge. Reading books has become that for me, a way to recharge and escape from the stress that this year has been. I own a yoga studio and in March 2020 I had to pivot my business to completely online due to our county executive mandates and I haven’t been able to have students in the studio since then. The stress of this pandemic has been a lot to endure. Thankfully, reading has become a very welcomed reprieve from all of it.

So how did I reach this goal?

I created a new habit of going to bed earlier so that I could read. That meant I had to learn how to say “no” to one more episode of whatever amazing show my wife and I escape into at the end of the day. Saying “no” to your own indulgences is hard but choosing books that are enjoyable to read makes going to bed earlier easier to do.
I bought a Kindle. I never thought I would love it as much as I do. Don’t get me wrong I still buy paper books as well but I noticed that when I’m reading on the Kindle I read faster than I do with a paper book. Maybe it’s the swiping to the next page, maybe it’s getting rid of the tactile sensory input of holding a book and feeling it’s weight and the texture of the pages on my fingertips that allows my brain more room to process the content rather than the sensory input of the experience of reading. This seems so silly but what also helps is that little text at the bottom of the screen that tells me how many minutes are left in the chapter….that tiny bit of data is often what pushes me to the finish line of completing the chapter before turning out the light to go to dreamland.
I started a book club. One of the members at my yoga studio asked me if I would ever consider doing one, it was the perfect timing for the new year and my new goal to “read more books” so right before the pandemic hit we met for the first time at the studio. After that, we’ve met every month via zoom. It’s a no-frills book club, people come in and out of it each month though we do have a strong core group that shows up every single month. We meet for one hour and each month someone volunteers to host, by being the host you facilitate the conversation and come to the meeting with some questions to get the conversation going. We have a growing list of books in a shared google spreadsheet that folks can add to at any time, fiction or non-fiction. Our only requirement is that the book has to be 400 pages or less.

I read 24 books.

I’m proud of myself and rather than trying to read and finish a book during the holidays so that I could claim one more book read. Instead, I’ve been enjoying basking in the accomplishment of completing the goal. I’m honoring “the pause” and allowing myself, or rather giving myself permission to enjoy this feeling of success.

Here is my list, not in the order that I read them but in the order of the images above from left to right.

The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent : this book is currently free (as of the date of this published post) on Kindle with an Amazon Prime membership.

Where The Story Starts by Imogen Clark

Can You Feel This? By Julie Orringer : this book is currently free (as of the date of this published post) on Kindle with an Amazon Prime membership.

Unspeakable Things by Jess Lourey

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O’Neal

The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

The Botanist’s Daughter by Kayte Nunn (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

Happy and You Know It by Laura Hankin (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

Themes and Variations by David Sedaris : this book is currently free (as of the date of this published post) on Kindle with an Amazon Prime membership.

Get Out of Your Own Way by Dave Hollis

In an Instant by Suzanne Redfearn

Brave Girl, Quiet Girl by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Spilled Milk by K.L Randis

Normal People by Sally Rooney (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins (Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club)

The Storyteller’s Secret by Sejal Badani

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

If you are interested in joining the virtual Bee Yoga Fusion Book Club, send me an email (Gretchen @ BeeYogaFusion.com), and I will add you to the email list.

The Importance of Letting Go

Coaching, Minimalism

Let’s think of our life from beginning to end as a journey. And throughout each of our individual journeys, we all at some point have struggled with the decision on what to continue to bring along with us on this journey and what to leave behind.

I have moved a lot, and completely by choice. I’m not in the military, jobs have not forced me to move. But in the last 26 years, I have lived in 16 places. That’s averaging a year and a half at each location! I really just like the process of moving, of starting fresh in a new place and purging the stuff in my life.

In the process of moving, and maybe even now with the pandemic and feeling as though you are stuck in being in the same space. Maybe you are looking at your walls and all of your possessions and wondering, do I really want all this stuff around me all the time?

During the pandemic, I know several people who have “Marie Kondo” their lives. Holding each item and asking if it brings them joy? And in the question of- does it bring me joy- we make the decision to either continue to bring it along with us on this journey or leave it behind.

Sometimes it feels hard to throw or give items away. It’s as though by giving away that teapot somehow it means that we are throwing away all the memories of sharing tea with friends. We give these physical items in our lives power, as though they are our memory keepers and we know that that is not true. The teapot doesn’t have that special power.

If we don’t purge some things in our life occasionally we begin to feel weighed down, it becomes almost as though we can no longer see anything new because all we’re seeing is old. All we’re seeing is old memories, old things we’ve carried around from place to place. And when we create a bit of space, space for the eye to drop into nothingness. We begin to lean into the possibility of change and lean into the possibility that maybe something could be different and that it will be for the good.

I’m not suggesting that we have to pack up our houses and move. I promised my wife we’d never move again, that this house is the last house. But just as we purge our closets of clothes that no longer fit or are outdated or as we go through papers and shred years of old documents and bills, we need to also really look at our habits. What can we get rid of that is no longer serving us well? Maybe that is the scoop of ice cream every night before bed. Maybe it’s the two glasses of wine after dinner. Maybe it’s the hours spent on Facebook.

As we embark towards the beginning of a new year. Let’s start to look around. Let’s look at the things that we are continuing to carry on our journey. Let’s look at the inventory, not just in our closets and around our houses but really take the time to look at ourselves. What can we dispose of that is no longer serving us? What habits can we get rid of, so that we can continue on our journey, lighter and more in line with who we want to be on a daily basis?

Empathy, Compassion, Truth, Hope.

Coaching

The words that have been sitting in my heart and mind from President-Elect Joe Biden’s speech on Saturday night are Empathy, Compassion, Truth, and Hope.

These are words that you hear me routinely speaking of within the yoga classes that I teach because they are part of the foundational principles that guide the practice of yoga.

Empathy requires the skill of being able to listen. Our yoga practice gives us this amazing opportunity to shut our mouths and be quiet. On our yoga mats, we learn what it’s like to have emotions that flutter up within us. To have moments of discomfort, or uncertainty, and to not be able to crack a joke about it, or haggle the teacher or dismiss it. Instead, we are to simply be present in everything that comes up for us during this time on our mats. The rule in a yoga class is that you are not allowed to talk. So we’ve gained this additional tool in our toolbox, of being quiet, which allows us to learn to practice empathy towards ourselves.

We learn how to listen, to ourselves, and to our bodies and to our minds. And from that practice, we then also sweetly fall into compassion. When we let go of that negative voice within our own minds or the storyline that we’ve been subscribing to for so long, whether it’s because someone else told us that we are to be that way, or you’ve just fallen into a habit. It’s in that moment of letting go of the negative internal voice that we offer ourselves compassion.

Truth is a big one in yoga, Satya in Sanskrit. It’s one of the guiding principles of my life. Learning how to stand in your truth, to speak your truth, and to live by the truth. It’s hard and sometimes it takes sacrifice. Sometimes it means standing alone or standing with the less popular group. But believe me when I say that standing in truth and aligning your life by the principle of truth is what will lead you into an amazing transformation within your spirit.

I myself, just speaking candidly, would like to see us get back to that period of time in which the Office of the President was respected. That people on both party lines aren’t cracking jokes and making fun of the person who is the leader of this country. My heart has been sad about that during the last four years. Whether or not I agreed with President Trump and his policies, the title of President deserves respect. And in turn, the person holding that office should be representing this country with dignity and treating all people with respect.

Regardless of what little circle we filled in with our black pens on our ballot sheets, whether our person won or our person lost, we can all stand together in truth,

Which then leads us to hope. We, as people, are more alike than different. We all hope for safety, for equality. For all people, regardless of the colors of our skin, or the gender that we identify or don’t identify with, regardless of who we love, or how we’ve decided to live our lives. We all hope for safety, equality, kindness, and love.

So let’s take one of these words today with us. Pick your favorite one. Empathy, Compassion, Truth, Hope.

Write it on a piece of paper or post-it note and put it somewhere in your house so that you see it every day for the rest of this week. Let’s use that as a reminder to keep cultivating our practice of yoga. To take this practice off of our mats and out into every aspect of our worlds.

If you haven’t yet listened to Joe Biden being interviewed by Brene Brown on her podcast, Unlocking Us, I highly recommend it.
https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-joe-biden-on-empathy-unity-and-courage/

How to Prepare for a Coronavirus Winter

Coaching, Wellness

6 Ideas to Help You Get Through This Trying Time.

As the leaves change colors and we make our way into winter here in Maryland, I’ve been thinking about this season as a time to prepare. A time to prepare for what is ahead. Similar to when we use to go on trips (before the pandemic) and we would pack our luggage after checking the weather of the place in which we were visiting. Or building the itinerary based on the interests of the people going on the trip, making sure that everyone felt included and was able to see something that they were interested in.

The COVID-19 cases are beginning to climb again and as those numbers increase, I find myself thinking about how I should prepare mentally for what could be another shutdown. What do I need to survive another round? I’m not talking about toilet paper or cleaning wipes. I’m talking mentally and spiritually. What do I need to do for myself and my family so that we can mentally survive the uncertainty, helplessness, and feelings of sadness?

Here is the list that I’ve made for myself and I hope it helps you in thinking of how you can prepare for this winter as well.

1. I bought a new winter jacket that is made for really low temperatures so that going on a walk with a friend is more pleasant to do.

As humans we are hardwired for connection, it’s important to prepare for the outdoor temperatures in order to stay in connection with the people you love. Visiting with friends or family outdoors and maintaining a six-foot distance is our safest bet.

2. Candles now live in every room of my house.

The uplifting smells really change my mood in an instant. Citrus smells are great for productivity. Lavender and vanilla scents can reduces stress and ease relaxation. Bergamot helps to boost your overall mood.

3. Holding my weekly yoga class on my calendar as sacred.

Absolutely NOTHING will take me away from that time on my mat, as a student. The to-do list will always be there. The emails and requests from my family can wait 60 minutes. First I need to refill my well. If I serve my family or my clients from a place of depletion, I am not serving them at my highest potential.

4. I’ve made a reoccurring FaceTime date with a friend for 1 hr each Friday to authentically connect regardless of whether we feel “good” or “bad”.

It’s so easy to cancel the scheduled hangout time with a friend when you are feeling blue. But this friend has seen me in my darkest days and the same goes for me seeing him and helping him through some tough struggles. We’ve promised each other to show up, each week and allow the conversation to be whatever it is. No expectations of happiness. No expectations of deep, powerful conversations either. It’s important for each of us to have a safe relationship outside of our marriage in which we can be honest and authentic. We are spending more time with our spouses during this pandemic, which is awesome. But it can also feel a bit like an echo chamber. Connect with someone who maybe thinks differently than you on a few topics, hear a different perspective.

5. I’m going to read every Bee Yoga Fusion book club book.

Even if it’s not something I would normally pick to read simply because I yearn for the connection with the folks who show up. Once a month we meet over zoom to discuss the book, one person volunteers to “host” the conversation, which basically means they google some questions to ask the group. It’s only an hour meeting but it feeds my soul in a way that nothing else does right now. Join us for our no-frills book club.

6. We purchased several new games to play with the teens.

Here are the ones that are in heavy rotation right now on our dining room table. Jumanji, Phase 10 card game, and Icons.

How will you prepare for another shutdown or stay-at-home order?
Reach out to your community, find an accountability buddy to take online fitness classes with, don’t resist help. Let’s lean on each other within the next stage of this uncertainty.

Erase Bad Memories to Make Room for JOY!

Coaching, Mindfulness

We are each made up of volumes of memories that create our present, our future, and our past. Each year we take in memories and impressions, which are then filed and stored within us mentally.

We choose for ourselves what memories we are going to keep ready and available at the forefront of our minds so that we can quickly pull them out and revisit them or tell a story about them. And we choose the memories that we are going to keep way back in the back of that filing cabinet, in the dark, dusty parts of the unconscious.

But here’s the thing, those memories, need to be weeded through regularly. Like tending to a garden, after planting the flowers we still occasionally need to pull out the weeds that have crept in.

The reason for weeding through the memories, even the unpleasant ones, is so that our consciousness can keep evolving. If we think of it in terms of having a storage cabinet of space. We can not purchase an additional unit of space, we are born with what we have. We have to get rid of the memories, typically in the deep back that we don’t want to look at often so that we have more room in the forefront for joy, for love, for laughter.

Repressing the memories of sadness or anger or hurt can create some serious health problems within us. The main one being that we can become triggered by something and we don’t realize what it is. Sometimes that thing that triggers us will be a person in our lives who will say something that is exactly like the person that hurt us, the memory that you’re storing in the deep dark recesses of the cabinet. Someone randomly will say something or sound exactly like that person who caused you pain or will do a mannerism like them and whoosh -that memory comes flooding right to the forefront of your mind. You then react to it with years of anger and years of hurt because you’ve been holding on to that file back there and carrying it around from place to place for so long. The unfortunate part of this is often the person who triggered you is not the person who deserves that energy in their lives that you are now giving them.

That’s why it is so important to go through these memories and weed out the ones you no longer need to hold on to. In the world of recovery or Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s called making amends. It’s an important step in recovery to go through and weed out the memories of where you have been wronged and where you have caused harm to someone else. You don’t need to tell anybody necessarily that you’re doing this, I mean in the recovery world we do, you do tell people that you’re doing this step on your path of recovery but for the folks who are just trying to live a better life, you don’t have to inform other people. You can just process it yourself.

Finding ways for ourselves to release these memories and emotions can vary greatly by each individual. I like to do my weeding while on my yoga mat, during a series of repetitive movements. Whether that is going through several sun salutations or shapeshifting from one pose like a side stretch to then moving over to the opposite side of the body and doing the same stretch. When I’m shapeshifting or doing a repetitive sequence, I like to close my eyes and that’s when I feel like I can really process the memories. By closing my eyes I get rid of the visual distractions and I can simply feel my body and think of these memories. There is no fear that I’m gonna bump into something or someone, I know where my space is on my mat while also allowing the breath to be my constant companion. This allows us to just breathe into the body and get into that deep subconscious mind and weed out the things that are not serving us to be our best selves. And making much-needed room for more joy, more love, and more laughter in our lives.

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Anchoring to this Moment

Coaching

When we teach children to swim we tell them that when they get tired and they don’t think they can swim any longer to flip over on their back and float. As adults, we aren’t ever taught what to do when things get hard and we don’t think that we can go on.

Child laying on their back and swimming in a pool

2017 was a very hard year for me, a year where I was in a fetal position crying on the floor on more than one occasion. That year my mother was fighting breast cancer and my sister and I were leading her care, my wife and I were trying to adopt a little boy from foster care and I was dealing with harassment from a yoga student at my studio.

Each of those events in my life involved time and emotional turmoil. My mom got an infection that required hospitalization, the little boy that said he wanted to be in our family was having second thoughts and raging his anger in my direction both verbally and physically, and the harassment situation involved lawyers, meeting with the chief of police about getting a restraining order and made me look at the world a bit differently. I was pulled thin in so many directions. On several days after dropping the foster child off at the school across the street from our house, I would close the front door and crumble to the floor and cry for hours. I’d lay there in our narrow entryway in fetal position and sob, my whole body would shake and the tears and snot would form a puddle staining the old wood floor. No one ever saw my breakdowns. I never advertised how difficult of a time I was having holding all the pieces of my life together. I pretended that I could handle it when I really wasn’t.

I knew this kind of darkness though. I’ve been here before, at a different time in my life, but I was familiar with these feelings of loss and desperation. In those moments of darkness, I know that I need an anchor, something to hold on to that will just keep me at that moment until I can get to my therapy appointment or until a solution presents itself. Something that won’t allow me to sink deeper into the dark hole of depression but will keep me present in my life and sober.

Notice I didn’t say that the anchor will make me “happy” or will completely shift the way I am feeling to an opposite feeling. Anchors are to hold you in the space that you are. I don’t have an illusion that there is a magic wand that could totally alter what I am experiencing and magically flip it to something good. The reality is that I need something to hold me in this space so that I don’t sink deeper. Crumbling on the floor crying for a few hours is very different from laying in bed under the covers with the curtains drawn for days, two very different experiences of sadness, and depression.

Brandi Carlile’s music has been and forever will be my anchor, her voice is the reminder that I need to flip over and float here for a while to just be in this moment. It won’t last forever and soon enough it will pass. What could your anchor be? Right now we are living in a pandemic and many people feel at a loss, many people are crumbling on the floor crying and some may be under the covers with the curtains drawn. What could you use to hold you at this moment so that you don’t sink further?

We are just holding, we aren’t pretending that we see the rainbow but we are acknowledging that we can see the sky if we just hold here for a little while. Anchors allow us to stay just as we are until the emotions pass and we have moved through that energy.

Anchors can be a routine that you do daily. Anchors can be music that you listen to, to remind you of moving forward. A movie that you love or a tv series. A hike on a favorite trail. A bike ride to a particular destination. Anchors can be honestly anything but it’s important that your anchor always be the same thing or activity. That way your body and mind know and can recognize what it is and the tool it is used for when you are falling into the well of darkness. Anchors should not be pouring the third glass of wine or eating the entire bag of Oreos! Those activities are not anchors, they are numbing you not to feel. Take a moment and think about it, start building your toolbox so that you can rely on those tools when you need them. Share in the comments what you play to use as your anchor, I’d love to hear them!