The divine permission I needed...

It feels like just yesterday I was on the banks of the Ganga.

After a month of intensive training in India, I was days away from returning home in late December 2018. The experience had, quite simply, changed my life. I made a promise to myself that I’d keep up my 30-minute morning mediation practice.


Easier said than done…


By 2020, my 30-minute routine was becoming difficult to keep up with. The gold stars I got everyday from the Insight Timer didn’t delight me as they once did. I felt guilty, like I’d let myself down.


Why did a practice that once felt so full of life, now feel so stale?


This was right around the time I started studying the ancient science of light, Jyotish / Vedic Astrology. I discovered quickly that as an Aries Ascendent, it’s in my nature to crave newness, adventure, action. New beginnings aren’t a struggle — I thrive on newness. This is particularly laughable when you consider how many times I moved yoga studios around the Flathead Valley. I opened Yoga Hive Montana in 7 different spaces over six years!


It all made more sense. I made more sense.


I dropped the guilt and started bringing newness and spontaneity into my everyday practice. 


Some days I’ll pull a card or three and journal. Watercolor painting has been a fun twist I’ve added this summer — as has writing more often. Meditating outside has also been powerful — sometimes with my eyes open, and sometimes closed.


Even more recently, after I sink into my mantra, I’ve been intentionally meeting my loved ones in visions. I journey back to my childhood home to visit with the version of my dad that I’ve lost to his ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s. Or just recently I journeyed to the 90s version of my grandmother’s home. I walked around, remembering everything I could, even tiny details like the feeling of the buttons on the television.


I’m simply allowing newness to flow inside the stability of my everyday practice — to honor my promise to myself I made in my yoga training all those years ago. This has made all the difference.