Recently, I was asked how I stay inspired while teaching and practicing yoga for over 30 years. I responded, "I teach by the seasons."

They asked me to explain.

When I healed my chronic pain through meditation, Chinese medicine, and Qigong and wove it all into my yoga practice, it intuitively made sense. Understanding that we are energetic beings housed in the physical body, and our energetic flow dictates how we feel emotionally and physically.

According to Chinese medicine, we are subject to seasonal energy depending on the sun's relationship to the earth. The sun is like our Wi-Fi signal, and our organs are like computers, each with its own specific function.

It's the time of year for heightened inspiration. Nature's energy is rising, sprouting, and blossoming, and that same energy runs through us, too.

I love to feel inspired; one could say I'm an inspirational junkie. But the problem yesterday, as I sat down to write, was that I wasn't feeling it. I tried and deleted it. I poked around for some inspirational help - but couldn't find it. I sat and wrote... and deleted it.

Inspiration can't be forced. So I took to the trees.

I want to share a personal experience I had this morning, in which I had to rely on the practices I teach in the upcoming Emotional Endurance Program and put them into action.

I woke up early to hear my husband getting up and making coffee.

Mornings are one of our favorite times to sit and sip my tea with him, listen to the news, and chat about what inspires us.

But this morning, he had different plans. He wanted to write, and I was disappointed. I wanted to connect, but he wanted to follow his inspiration and get some work done. This has been happening for a few days, and I feel like our special time is being usurped.

The other day, while sitting with a new student, I was struck by how she identified with her emotional state—because we all do this.

We speak as if we are our emotions!

She told me, "I am an anxious person".

When we identify with our emotions, how we speak about ourselves limits us. In English, we use the "I am" in front of the emotion.

We believe that's who we are and peg ourselves into a corner as 'this is who I am' instead of framing it as experiencing an emotion.

Recently, I struggled with an issue, and my mentor said, "Remember the Buddha's teaching; it's only a problem if you make it one."

Wow, right, it's all about how I frame it.

This made me think of how I speak. to myself about things I have to do that I resist.

Mel Robbins, a motivational coach, inspired me to change "I have to" to "I get to!" What an energetic shift!

I can view challenges as problems -that make them worse, or I can view them as something I get to work through

As I was driving to visit someone with whom I had some issues over twenty years ago, I realized that I still haven't completely forgiven them.

When after they apologized and I understood why they said the hurtful things they did, I still harbored resentment toward them.

I've been reflecting on the act of forgiveness, as it's part of the spring's wood element's attributes.

What makes forgiveness easier for me is realizing that it is more about my own well-being than about releasing the other person from the offense.

It took me years to understand forgiveness. I thought it was about letting them off the hook. But with big issues, that's not always possible.

The other day, I was working with a student obsessing about an issue she was dealing with.

Her breath was short and erratic.

She was caught in the obsessive thinking mind, analysis to paralysis.

I asked her to try a mind exercise for a moment (and you can, too):

Think of whatever feels challenging at the moment.

See the issue in your mind that keeps re-running.

Now, expand the frame around it.

Let your consciousness shift to the back of your mind, the observer.

Expand the frame a bit more.

When we have new inspirations we want to pursue, the shaky nerves of growth must be recognized and tended to.

A sprout is delicate and vulnerable. It can easily be trampled and squashed.

This relates to the new ideas we want to pursue.

When I had the idea to write my book, The Empowered Yogi, I kept it private, sharing it with my closest people. I only allowed my editor to read it when I started writing it because it felt so vulnerable.

When I first started on my yoga path, my lower back pain became worse and worse.

I started yoga to heal my aching back, and it did, and then it got worse. 

I kept re-injuring it through the vigorous Ashtanga practice, and I was so annoyed by it! I was hobbling out of my second teacher training, living on Advil.

How could this be? 

I was embarrassed by my back pain, which made my spine look disfigured. I was ashamed of it. 

I was so angry at it. It seriously got in the way. 

I wrote about this in my book, The Empowered Yogi, and how one of the last healers I went to wrote on my chart, “She needs to heal herself”. He told me I needed to heal my first and second chakra issues

I was recently tasked to learn something new and out of my comfort zone. I thought, oh, I can't do this; this is out of my wheelhouse.

I had to examine what was stopping me from taking on this challenge. An old belief from my childhood told me, "You're not smart enough."

Because I learned differently from the highly academic town of Princeton, where I grew up, I was plagued with the belief that I didn't measure up.

A statement I've been contemplating a lot lately is:

The things we repeatedly think about become our beliefs.

The energy shift from the dead of winter into the 'quickening' promise of spring is happening - and it's one of my favorite times.

Not because it's particularly beautiful outside, because it's not; it's grey - a lot this winter.

But with the thaw and the bird song, even the smell reminds us that energy is moving upward from the deep winter stillness into the subtle greening ~ HOPE is palatable.

This dormant energy is awakening in us, too. Winter is the time of transformation. It's time to observe what wants to grow.

I was taking a hike with a friend last week and reflected on what kind of listener she is.

Although my friend is a kind, gentle soul who cares deeply, she often interrupts me to share her experiences.

I know she’s unaware of it, and unknowingly, I probably do it too. Considering what it means to be a good listener, I'm reminded that the ears are the sense doors to the kidneys, which are energetically running strong in the winter.

This makes it the easiest time of year to strengthen our listening and attention.

A practice I’m working on is checking in with myself on anything I feel critical about - do I do that? Even if it’s not as extreme, I’m probably guilty of it, too, or it wouldn’t trigger me so much.

When we criticize others, it's time to look in the mirror!

Have you ever tried visualizing your FUTURE SELF as the best version of your potential?

This is a classic Taoist meditation that’s very effective at the end of winter, moving into spring.

This meditation is timely because of the seasonal energy.

Currently, we are shifting from the stillness of winter, which cultivates a strong intuition, into new spring growth.

One of the primary aspects of the Meridian Flow practice is guiding our energy with our attention and breath. And where our mind goes, our energy flows.

In this meditation of projecting our future SELF, we set our minds to guide our energy to the trajectory of who we want to become. And it’s so effective!

As we are coming to the end of the winter water element, I was struck by how essential water is to make life habitable in a very personal way.

We just arrived in Costa Rica a few days before our yoga retreat starts, and our Airbnb didn’t have water! Not a drop.

No bathing, no cooking, completely relying on drinking water from what we brought. Ayiiiii! Needless to say, we had to quickly re-locate.

Have you ever tried visualizing your FUTURE SELF as the best version of your potential?

This is a classic Taoist meditation that’s very effective at the end of winter, moving into spring.

This meditation is timely because of the seasonal energy.

Currently, we are shifting from the stillness of winter, which cultivates a strong intuition, into new spring growth.

One of the primary aspects of the Meridian Flow practice is guiding our energy with our attention and breath. And where our mind goes, our energy flows.

In this meditation of projecting our future SELF, we set our minds to guide our energy to the trajectory of who we want to become. And it’s so effective!

As we are coming to the end of the winter water element, I was struck by how essential water is to make life habitable in a very personal way.

We just arrived in Costa Rica a few days before our yoga retreat starts, and our Airbnb didn’t have water! Not a drop.

No bathing, no cooking, completely relying on drinking water from what we brought. Ayiiiii! Needless to say, we had to quickly re-locate.

Now, I’ve done a lot of camping and stayed in cabins where I’ve hauled my own water, and that was fine as long as I had a source of water to get to. But there wasn’t a source here to draw water from, and it suddenly felt uninhabitable.

No matter how nice the surroundings and the aesthetics were, it doesn’t work without water.

Water is life.

How do you cope with the change of seasons? For some, it’s exciting, and for some, it’s challenging.

Most of us are relieved that winter is over and are excited about spring; I know I am, but it’s important to understand the energies we all experience each season and observe whether we are in or out of balance.

Balanced energy = health and well-being

Imbalanced energy = dis-ease

According to traditional Chinese medicine, the five elemental paradigms we use in the Meridian Flow practices relate to the sun's position relative to the Earth.

This isn’t as far out as it sounds.

After years of teaching and more years of practicing, I found that I was getting into the ruts of doing the same practice without a rhythm or structure to follow.

This created boredom and was random in my practice and teaching.

I have realized that I like rhythms and systems to follow. I lived out west for years without seasons, thinking that I would love to live in the eternal spring/summer weather, but I found that I felt lost in the monotony of nice weather and couldn't remember what season it was, which was disconcerting.

When I found the seasonal rhythm of the meridians (energy pathways) to activate and have specific meditations and breathwork that corresponded to the energy and emotions of the season, it gave my practice and teaching an intelligent format to follow that made intrinsic sense.

Otherwise, I was shooting in the dark with what meditation, pranayama technique, or poses I wanted to teach.

I struggle with chronic pain, which is why I get on my mat every day.

Through my many years of chronic low back pain, I knew it was a deeper issue than just physical. It was an energetic deficiency, and I needed to take the healing into my own hands.

Low back and knee pain are often related to weak kidney qi (energy).

According to ancient Eastern wisdom, as we age, the best thing we can do is fortify our kidney Qi. The kidneys are our bio-batteries, and their energy depletes as we age.

When kidney qi is weak, it shows up as:

• Fearful and insecure

• Poor memory, decline of cognitive abilities (the brain is directly related to kidney qi)

• Lower backache

• Knee trounles

• Loss of hearing, tinnitus, and vertigo (the ears are the sense doors to the kidneys)

• Loss of head hair

• osteoporosis/ osteopenia (the bones are the bodily tissue energetically associated with the kidneys and water element)

The winter is the season that the kidneys are energetically running the strongest and the best time to strengthen kidney Qi.

A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with a good friend who had just gotten over COVID-19 and was suffering from significant loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

We talked about him working from home and not being around other people much, other than his Zoom meetings.

One of the major longevity factors for people living well into old age is not only eating well and exercising but connecting with people and feeling a sense of community.

He uses his local cafe for that, but he admitted it's not fulfilling.

I suggested going back to his local yoga studio, committing to 3 classes per week, and becoming a regular so he could build new relationships with others who are like-minded and on the same path of wellness.