YOUR YEAR in a WORD

What’s in there…In the dark?

This is the time of year where the days get shorter and the nights get longer. Where we find ourselves at the beginning and the end. The bounty of the growing season is coming to an end. I cut my perennial gardens back and my beloved cut flower garden came out only 2 weeks ago and already feels long gone. But we’ve still got kale and hearty greens to pick. Root vegetables and squash to choose from. The earth is not quite done with the cycle of this growing season, but close.

I LOVE this time of year. This is the time of year we start asking ourselves what we want as we make our way toward a new year and reflect on what we wanted for the current year and how it went. How did we do this trip around the sun? What do we want for the coming year? It’s an ambiguous and inspiring space full of potential for the future and the same time an opportunity to reflect and be grateful for what we learned from the current year as it comes to a close.

I started this project, YOUR YEAR IN A WORD, for myself several years ago now. The idea was to pick a word that would keep me focused as winter approached. I would make a ‘flag’ of my word and put it on my nightstand so it would be the first thing I saw in the morning and the last thing I saw at night. It would always kind of be out there to guide me like my own personal North Star when I got lost or off track.

In the yoga world we call this puja. Puja literally means ‘to place in front of you what it is you want to become’. How beautiful is that?! We set up a puja, or altar, in our yoga studios to recognize this for ourselves and each other. To recognize we have a place to go where we get to do our work individually but together as a group. More overlapping cycles of growth, change, and opportunity to design the lives we want and be thankful for the work we’ve done so far and recognize that in each other.

So, what is your work in the dark? What do you want to move toward as we make our way through the end to a new beginning?

This Thursday I will teach the annual YOUR YEAR IN A WORD class. I will start with a brief story on the 3 Goddesses and what they represent in the cycles of change and challenge metaphorically and then take the class through a brief meditation where you have an opportunity to start thinking about your word for 2017.

YOUR YEAR IN A WORD
Thursday, Oct 27th
6:30 – 8:00 PM
$12 Pre-Pay // $15 Drop-In
All Levels Welcome