Aloha from Lahaina

For all of my friends who might normally receive a postcard, please consider this your postcard. I'll add a pic when I return!

Maui is more than we imagined. This is T's second trip, my first. On his first trip a couple years ago he was here with a convention that had him inside conference rooms from 8AM to 8PM at an expensive hotel that in his words, wasn't worth the money.

He swore he'd never come back, but when I was searching for a vacation locale I ruled out Mexico and came up with Hawaii. I decided I wanted to keep my tourism dollars in the US, thank you.

Fine, he said, I'll go to Maui.

That's all the background, since then, we have had a serendipitious, wondrous, adventurous trip. We woke at 5:30AM the first full day (PDT finally came in handy) and drove the road to Hana. We swam in one of the seven sacred pools which are not actually sacred but just very cold. T jumped from a 15 foot waterfall into the super cold water as I treaded water. We congratulated ourselves on leaving early enough that all of the tour buses were behind us. We ignored the car rental warnings and took the gravel road back and marveled at the microclimates of the east side of Maui. Within minutes we drove through arid valleys, lush mountains, and rain that disappeared unceremoniously. We stopped at a Napa-esce winery along the way but didn't care for the pineapple wine.

We arrived back at the Royal Lahaina Resort around 4:30 and I chose the restaurant du noir by opening a page in a restaurant guide. Feast of Lele it was...we called and they had one cancellation five minutes earlier. The price tag was a bit biting at $105pp but we jumped at it and didn't regret. It helped when they said those magic words... "open bar." The dancing was marvelous and the food was original and tasty. The people next to us said they had made their reservation two weeks in advance and we just smiled with the laws of synchronicity on our side.

Tuesday I leaped into my fears of salt water in my eyes as we took a two hour SURFING lesson! As it would turn out the main prinicples of surfing are balance and focus. For my YT readers, does that sound familiar? To get up on the board, the first move looks remarkably like up-dog. I did get up about 4 or five times and have pics to prove it, as well as the board rash on my inner elbows. Was it worth it? HELL YES! Yes, I got water in my eyes, yes it stung, yes it was likely my sunscreen, but I was surfing!!! Our instructor was this super-cool local named Donnie who could have been Cheech's cousin. HIs first piece of advice for me: don't give up on yourself. Yikes. For the record, I am counting these two hours towards my weekly yoga quota.

Wednesday we went snorkeling with the Pacific Whale Foundation people and a hundred other tourists. We swam with turtles at Turtle Town (I saw two, T saw two different ones) and later swam at Molokini Crater where we saw a super cool pink and blue neon fish among others. Last night for dinner we drove into Lahaina - a cool little beach town down the road from our hotel that remindes me of Key West. We ate at Cheeseburger in Paradise sitting at the bar chit-chatting with the bartender who did admit that at the end of the night the servers separate the receipts with phone numbers from the ones that don't.

Today we leave on a midnight flight (to Georgia, no, just to Vegas) and are trying to keep the Aloha in our hearts for a little bit longer. We're getting side by side massages on the beach in about half an hour and going to the Aquarium this afternoon when we check out of the hotel.

The Royal Lahina Resort is a great 3 star place with friendly staff. Having worked for a five star hotel in the early 90s had tainted me once, but now I am a down to earth 3 star hotel kind of girl. Give me a decent bed, clean sheets, and a surf I can hear from my room and I'm a happy girl. For the record, I booked air/hotel on Hotwire three weeks in advance and got excellent prices.

Enough for now, aloha and I'll see you all soon.

When things line up

On nights like these I don't know quite what to do with myself. Ava was delivered to me asleep at 7:10PM and since she didn't nap today I figure she's out for the night. My mind races with the twenty things it could do in my free two hours. I can't leave the house because I'm not moving the sleeping toddler, but there are all these things that could use doing.

I've had enough yoga for the day. I led my second of two volunteer classes for a group of 12 year old girls training for a 5k race on Sunday. There was one girl in particular who was quite the chatter box. I got my biggest lesson though when I realized that the girls on one side of me were all following along, and the girls on the other side were all chatting...I just taught the ones who were paying attention!

In my not too distant past, as in yesterday, I would have paid more attention to the ones who weren't listening. I would have been angry, or upset, or tried harder to get their attention. Today I just turned to face the four girls that were doing their best to follow my instruction. I adjusted their poses and praised their efforts. Then I noticed most of the other half were paying attention again so I said "welcome back" and sat so everyone could see me. I got the most chagrin when I demonstrated virabhadrasana three and arda chandrasana, as in "I can't do that!" but I just said "try, see what happens."

It took a few miracles to get me to the class today. Yesterday I was full of reasons why I couldn't lead this class even though I loved it last time. Too busy, can't take the time away from work, only have six yoga mats and I need ten, such valid excuses. But I dusted off my excuses and told myself yesterday afternoon I was going to Big 5 and I was going to buy four mats, even if they were $20 a piece I'll need them for my kids class in June.

I walk to the aisle and they're on SALE! Instead of $19.99 they're $11.99! Okay, fine, I tell whomever is listening in the Universe, I'll teach the class.

Of course today lined up perfectly and I wasn't even missed when I left my last client at 3PM. Of course the girls remembered me from three weeks ago and some were even excited about yoga today.

Of course I realized that I just adore teaching this age group. I adore teaching girls, this age, on this edge of puberty, on this fragile, fertile ground when they're at risk of forgetting how wonderful they are.

Teaching the toddlers will be fun; I know it will. There is something about teaching girls this age how to focus, how to find the strength and power in their bodies that are changing rapidly and sometimes not rapidly enough. Maybe I'm trying to reclaim myself when I was 12. Maybe I wish yoga was a part of my life then. Maybe I just want to share this gift with them and see what happens.

Now though, that I've completed one of those things on my list, I'll open my last remaining unopened yoga book on Anatomy of Movement and get my brain a little more prepared for this weekend's yoga classes on anatomy.

Ground for potent change

I believe something powerful and potent is happening in my body. On Tuesday I went to see my trusted homeopath and mentioned a few ailments and as a last thought that I've had a minor bit of congestion for a while. She said I've had the congestion for six weeks (which sounds right), okay, I look in my calendar having no clue what would have happened six weeks ago. No, nothing obvious, but wait, it was a close relative's wedding anniversary and her husband passed away two years ago.

It's not about me specifically. I picked up some kind of virus about this so my homeopath cleared it and sent me on my way. Since then I got conjunctivitis (pink eye) in my left eye and an off and on sinus headache & congestion combo. It's all the virus - starting with my gall bladder that is somehow connected to my (poor) hearing and perhaps even my (poor) vision.

The pink eye is getting less pink, fortunately, and today's yoga training class gave me more energy than I've had in four days. During class I was thumbing through my copy of Light on Yoga by Mr. BK Iyengar himself and found a bit on remedy poses for gall bladders. I thought, just for fun, I would insert into my semi-predictable home practice the poses recommended for gall bladder issues. Just to try, experiment, and see what happens. A bunch of them I've been doing already, to my surprise, but I'm going to see if there is anything new I may add.

Because I believe something major is happening in my body, that through all of these hours and hours of yoga I'm blasting through some major blocks and things are coming up. Things, emotional things, stored in places in my body that are stuck.

I took on this class because I wanted to teach kids yoga. Some more intelligent part of me knew yoga would heal me in the process.

Thank you Becky!!!!

Meaningless drivel and life as a temporary single mom

Ava is taking a super-long nap that started at 4PM with a required 5 minute cry-to-sleep-time since she was in nap resistance and now it's just creeping past 8PM and I wonder if she's calling it a night.

This week I'm impersonating a single Mom. T is down south taking care of work and I am coordinating and conducting the babysitters throughout each day I have yoga or work. Sunday I decided, after stressing about this week in advance with angst and tears, that everything would work out OKAY. Somehow, someway, even though four different babysitters are involved including one who hadn't even met Ava yet, it would all work out.

I'm halfway through the Single Mom week and it is working out! I don't know how, but it is! Saturday during yoga it was our teenage babysitter from across the street; Sunday it was my Mother in law who picked Ava up two hours early and I got to go to a yoga class! Monday was real fun - the morning was a friend from the Yoga Teacher Training (who teaches toddlers here) whom Ava just loved immediately (yes, can you hear my sigh of relief all the way across the Internet?) and the afternoon was my Mother in law again. Today I was off, although it was hard to tell with the five or twelve calls I got from clients and coworkers. Tomorrow and Thursday the featured babysitter is a close family friend who loves Ava as if she was related by blood. Friday, blessedly, T returns and I will run far, far away but be back in time for yoga class at 8PM.

It's kind of fun, the way vacations are a break from reality fun. I miss T, but as I told him, this week I only have my own stress to deal with, so as long as I'm not stressed, the house is stress free. I'm such a sponge that I pick up his stress and magnify it, even if he's downstairs watching TV and I'm reading upstairs.

I don't know what I came here to write, but it's kind of like morning pages when I haven't done them for weeks and suddenly there's a flood of words when I pick up a pen.

Speaking of Morning Pages (MP's), I just picked them back up this week. My little exercise to get up early enough to meditate before my family woke tripped over its shoelace. Get up early? Ha! HA HA! So for the last four weeks or so I haven't meditated or done MP's in the morning and I've been a skattered mess. Well, not so much with all the yoga, but more skattered than I like to be.

Sunday marked the first day of Return To MP's (RTMP), while Ava slept, and also Monday before I went to work. Today the RTMP wasn't quite so tidy, one page in bed, second page while Ava fed herself Cherioos and strawberries and asked five times for "mo pees juice" which then spilled down her legs and all over the floor because I gave her a real cup instead of a sippy. The third page got finished right before the spilled juice that left a clean spot on the otherwise dirty floor.

But it's so nice to dump all of my meaningless drivel and droplets onto those blank white pages! It's so wonderful even if reading them will be pointless. Okay, so I had dreams about vampires, I mean really, so what? The so what is - that stuff is out of my head. I could kiss the picture of Julia on the back of the AW I'm so delighted!

Maybe someday I will be good at meditating. Maybe someday when a toddler doesn't sit in my lap or put soft plush music playing toys in my lap. Maybe, but for now, writing those three pages is my meditation. It may not be what ancient yogis had in mind, but it works for me.