End of 2023 Reflections and Intentions for 2024

It's been interesting to peruse social media and see the similarities of experiences for our global community in 2023. Challenge. Roller-coaster ride with ups and downs. Growth. Suprises. Those were key words for my year and, whether confirmation bias or otherwise, I think, for much of the world. 

As I look back and reflect on my experiences, I am affirmed in a conclusion pointed out to us in 2018 during my yoga teacher training on authenticity and intuition - when we are aligned to our highest selves - the selves we know we are when we are living authentically to the connected divine within us all - those moments are filled with ease. You can read all sorts of modern books on this concept around "flow" and I've found that 2023 was so riddled with ups and downs because I was not attuned with my inner voice. Moments when I was in flow happened by chance, not because I was truly listening to the quiet id instead of the mouthy ego. The best things in my year came easily. They fell into my lap. I love that phrase. My best relationships in life are like that too, being with my husband, my best friends, there is always a sense of "ease." There is a phrase in Spanish "me cae bien" - I fall with that person well. And that sums it up. 

It's a feeling that works with people and relationships, with my career, with my creative pursuits. What difficult things come easily for me? What comes as naturally as gravity acting on an object? 

This year, I painted 29 hand-painted watercolor pieces to send out with my holiday cards and when talking with others about it, I realized they assumed it was difficult. When in truth, it was one of the easiest things I've done all year - I spent much of those days of painting in flow, happily expressing myself and creating something for those I love. 

I also felt that sense of easy falling with my yoga teaching at Green Lotus in Lakeville, Minnesota. Creating the yin and vinyasa classes, easy. Holding space and guiding students through their own practice, flow. Making community and feeling love and appreciation every week, as natural as falling. 

When I think back to how my decision-making in 2023 allowed me to "fall-into" things or where instead I pushed, teeth-bared to make something happen and later felt the pain of misalignment, I'm resolved to approach things differently in 2024. The yoga asanas, the actual postures in the ancient yoga texts are referred to in Sanskrit as "steady-ease filled postures," so, as I do in my yoga practice, quieting the need to "strive" and instead looking for the ease and steadiness in the simplest to most arduous postures, that's what I'm resolved to do in 2024.

Wish me luck, friends, and may our 2024 be filled with great and wonderful accomplishments and relationships that come as easy as falling.