Good morning to my fellow yogis and yoginis! Between my birthday and the enjoyment of watching you in yoga class, the past couple weeks have been full of fun and excitement for me. This week, though, I'm back to my normal schedule and back in the swing of being a yoga dog.

Even though it was great to be back in class and back to my yoga-dog duties, this week did seem a little boring and routine compared to all the excitement I had been having. My first instinct was to start wishing for the next big birthday party so that I could have fun again. But then it hit me that this was no way to go through life - living only for events that happen every once in a while and mindlessly trudging through the rest. I want to have fun in between those big events, too!

With this thought in mind as I was watching yoga class, I realized that there was a valuable lesson for me in the way that y'all practice the poses. You see, with yoga, our first inclination is just to focus on hitting these big, exciting postures, and we sometimes forget about all the movements in between those postures. But the more we practice, the more we start to become aware of our bodies and how we move into and out of the postures; we start to enjoy not only the poses, but all the stuff in between the asanas, as well. We learn not to rush from one impressive pose to the next, but instead to really get in there and experience every bit of the movement. This lesson starts to carry over into our daily lives, and before we know it, our hearts are filled with an appreciation that causes us to move through each day wide-awake, and experience everything that day offers, even the stuff that used to feel boring and mundane.

There is much more to life than just birthday parties, just as there is much more to yoga than hitting impressive postures. When we start to experience and enjoy the movement between the postures, we're teaching ourselves to experience and enjoy even the day-to-day routines in between the exciting parties.

So this week, I'm going to focus on really living and experiencing my daily routines, not just blindly sleepwalking through them until my next party. And I hope you will also focus on connecting to the appreciation and joy that keep you energized and radiant, even in those weeks between birthday parties!

Namaste,
Tiki