never say never…

I’m sitting at one of my favorite local restaurants in between zoom calls and just kind of sitting in a reflection of how much things have changed.

Last year around this time I jumped at an opportunity to teach yoga for the Food For Life program at a local non profit organization called Grow Good: a unique organization and urban farm whose mission is to serve the Salvation Army Bell shelter across the street. The farm itself sends their fresh, organic harvested produced directly to the shelter kitchen. In the Food For Life program, we teach yoga & holistic wellness in weekly workshop style classes designed to support the shelter participants - our students mainly made up of folks in recovery and veterans - in cultivating healthy living habits that support their physical, emotional, and mental well-being. We hold classes outside in a garden space, in a circle, under a huge tree. We take walks through the farm and pick fresh fruit and vegetables. “We observe and connect with the patterns, processes, and relationships among the natural world” to restore and reconnect a broken bond we tweet human and spirit.

This is some form of a “dream job”. I used to think I had a dream job. Teaching yoga and having the privilege somehow to offer a sacred practice I’ve come to adopt and benefit from has seriously been a dream. Getting to apply that vision to a purpose & cause much bigger than myself is an even bigger dream that materialized while starting to spend time getting clearer on what direction I wanted to go in and how I wanted to continue on the path as a yoga teacher and being of service. And it’s a beautiful beast that is taking me in a direction that I recognize and also couldn’t imagine. That part I love. I love moving into the un-imaginable, the un-foreseeable.

So I said I’d never take a “desk job” again but here I am. At a table sitting. I do this for hours a day now. Connecting with people in the community to get a little support for the unhoused community, which has been so stigmatized and marginalized.

For the last month, I’ve been managing the Food For Life program. It was a totally unplanned thing that is now one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever had. Running a program I really love and believe in makes it easy. Wanting it to grow is natural. I can feel the foundation underneath me that was built years and years ago. At that time I wasn’t ready to stand and work on that, but now it’s holding me up. Our past, however behind us it is, often has elements that we use as ground.

I’ve been here before. Years ago I did research and advocacy work with this very same community. It was a different project and a very different time and place in my life. Returning to this field of work in this time feels different. I’m bringing a different version of myself into it all. And yoga is still a very large part of it - if not a major component.

I guess it took a pandemic for me to pivot and redirect to find myself doing a thing I said I’d never do (again). How many things have I said I’d “never” do and wound up doing them? So many.

Maybe there are things that are a firm no and remain that way for as long as we live. But I continue to find that embodying the practice of openness and surrender to life means that change is all there ever is. And that who we are today may find that what was a no before is a yes now. When we surrender to the flow of life and the sequence that we co-create, we stop limiting ourselves to only what we think is or isn’t possible. This is a reflection for the moment and every moment. Even despite having declared “I’d never”, I am. We ebb and we flow and move with the realization that life is mostly out of our control.

We never know where we’ll end up, what will happen, or how all of the moments in our lives will mold us. Things we have left behind always have the potential to pop up again. And personally, I believe that the things that really mean something to us don’t go anywhere. Our passions, creative inspirations and pursuits- these are things that gravitationally pull at our being. Maybe we ignore or suppress them. Maybe the timing isn’t right. The process and unfolding of our journeys is a wild mystery. But I think we all have moments that take place, maybe further down the line, that give us the feeling that the parts have come together, the moments and experiences are all connected and have some purpose. They feel like they led to where you are now. And perhaps they did.

I may work at a desk more than I’m teaching classes now, but it’s not the end of a dream. I see this as the application of all I have to offer, and a passion that’s been practiced for years, being put toward a bigger, evolved version of this dream.

I’m still very much a yoga teacher and I know that I always will be. Even if I also find other ways to be of service to you and this great big world we live in.