I looked at him and said, “Do I really have to do this?” To which he replied, “Did you really want to get better?” I bit the bullet.

There is nothing but liquid turbulence tossing me hither and yon. No sense of up, down, sideways. I hold this precious breath as long as humanly possible.

Life pulls us this way and that. Sometimes we think one thing, feel another then move in a direction totally unrelated. Out of alignment. Sigh.

Been moving through a rough patch lately. Such is life, eh? My 74th turn around the planet right around the corner, a reminder of my draft into life’s black belt training unit. And what is it I am training for? Every day, like it or not, I am the recipient of ever advanced readiness coaching for The Big Whatever.

Woke up energized this morning and took full advantage of that state to re-record the Introductory Videos on the website. Three years ago they were formatted from an on-line series: hour long practices, four of ‘em. They were so ready for streamlining and updating.

Must’ve been 2007 when I first spent some deeply personal moments with Sam, who gave me permission to write this story. A student in my roll and release workshop, we connected at Deep, now Yoga Shala. We had already become acquainted on the dance floor.

Stillness in December has been an acquired taste. My southern California childhood, a year round adventure land, offered no pause for the cold or inclement. I’ve lived up north fifty plus years, but vividly recall when winter’s creep beneath my collar set off tendrils of warmth-craving. Prolonged fog would nestle under my skin and push me on edge.

I kitchen puttered all day Wednesday, making all the things, totally taking pleasure in the comfort, the ritual, the predictability of prepping Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve done this So Many Times.

It was autumn ’72 when I graduated from UCSF medical school, clutching a degree in physical therapy, pretty much clueless about the journey to come. It would be another thirty years before persistent dabbling in yoga and dance would begin to fully inform this chosen vocation. I had no idea that the nature of this work was evolutionary. No notion that it might look different fifty years down the road.

I can actually conjure up that buttery smell of hot cinnamon. The smell of fluden wafted into every corner of that green weathered farmhouse. When grandma baked, she was forever low humming and as she pulled steaming pastry from the oven, she always warned me to let it cool.

Beyond the boundaries of our own skin, the news ticker from the mundane to the cataclysmic is loud and continual. Each to our own, we titrate the current events that shape our world. Some of us have only the capacity to be porous to the immediacy of our home base. Maybe absorb happenings in the local community or near geography. Attend to places tangible, breathable, adjacent. Know thyself. Shields are a necessary strategy at any point in our lives.