For the Love of Teachers

Teachers come in many forms. Family members and significant others are definitely among the greatest teachers in our lives (Who hasn't learned an incredible amount about one's self, relationships, kindness, and love from their parents, siblings, or partners?). As is nature--animals, cycles, and weather, for example (Does not a great thunderstorm humble you? Or the patience of the heron, quietly waiting and watching, inspire you?). Pain, heartbreak, difficult circumstances, and loss are our teachers as well (Do you not come out of pain with some kind of greater understanding of yourself and the world?). Really, when we pay attention and are receptive, everything in our lives teaches us something. But specifically I want to focus on the importance of what I will call our "intentional teachers", the ones who we ask into our lives and pursue relationships with because of the way that they make us expand and evolve. I truly believe this is one of the great tasks we have as human beings--to have intentional teachers in our lives. Ideally, always. Who I think of when I think of my intentional teacher is my beloved, and first, yoga teacher and mentor, Karen Sprute-Francovich.

Between my sophomore and junior year in high school, I moved to Coeur d' Alene, Idaho from an active and thriving social life in Bellevue, Washington. Needless to say, it was hard. I had been a dancer since I was eight, and with very few dance options in Coeur d' Alene at the time, my mom somehow discovered Karen at Garden Street School of Anusara Yoga and got me signed up for a session with her. Fortuitously, she had just recently started up the studio after moving from Boise, Idaho. Karen, and yoga, immediately touched something deeper within me than I had known before. Looking back, I recognize that feeling as being touched by Grace. Yoga literally supported me through my last two years of high school (I could have slumped and slouched my way through two years, but instead stood tall and found a niche, albeit very different from my niche in Bellevue, that has truly paved the path of my life--in no small part due to yoga, and of course, Karen).

Then, I went away for college. After one year and a handful of emotionally very difficult circumstances, Karen called me. I'll never forget...I was on the beach in Santa Cruz with my friend Claire, talking about my future and what to do with myself. And probably boys (we did a lot of that). Then Karen called and asked me to come back to Coeur d' Alene for a year and participate in her first immersion, "Beauty School," and to start a mentorship with her. I went. Full heartedly. I won't go into the details about that year, but I will say it was far and away the most transformative year of my life. My kula, or my community of the heart, were (and still are) indescribably important to me. I became extremely attached to Karen as a mentor and as a motherly figure. She taught me a lot that I am still processing--and know I will continue to throughout my life. As she once told me, it's impossible to really understand a teaching until one has had a direct experience of that teaching, and to no surprise, that's exactly what I have found. The seeds of wisdom that she planted in my heart have steadily taken root over the years.

19-year-old me and my beloved teacher, Karen.

My lovely Kula at HeartSong in 2005.

Since then, I have lived in Costa Rica (where I stayed and worked at a beyond incredible sustainable living center and sanctuary, Rancho Mastatal), Lolo, Missoula, southeastern Utah (not really lived, but explored for two months with an amazing field-based education organization, The Wild Rockies Field Institute), East Glacier Park (where my husband is from), Coeur d' Alene again, Missoula again, East Glacier again, Missoula again, Yellowstone briefly, East Glacier again, and finally at the present, I am living happily in Lolo. I've finished an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree, gotten married (including the overwhelming consumption of falling in love and the oh-so-common loss of balance that accompanies it!), been a nanny, a produce clerk, a waitress, worked a few other odd-ends jobs, lived in a tent, lived in a camper, and am now a full-time youth worker at Hellgate High School. The only thing that has really stayed steady is my loving, supportive family. But for now, we're pretty much here. And amidst all of this moving I have taught yoga, stopped teaching, not had a local teacher, fallen out of yoga for short periods, and been somewhere kind of in between all of these things.

Through all of the changes, I have yearned for a teacher, and missed my teacher deeply. But I have not tried very hard to find a local teacher (honestly, I have resisted it). And for the most part, I didn't pursue yoga much at all for a few years. Now, however, I have shifted back--maybe it's the stability of a regular job and not moving around as much, or maybe it was just a commitment that I made to myself, but I have slowly become more immersed in my spiritual life, and yoga, again. And it's different now--I have "grown up" in a sense...and I have most definitely changed. I am in a place where I know that I need a teacher, or teachers, in my life more regularly. I have been "seeing other teachers,"mostly at workshops, and learning more than I could have imagined from them. But Karen is still my teacher, the one who I think of with deep gratitude on a daily basis. It is in my intentions to see her more often, and I will. I am eternally grateful for the amazing beauty that Karen has brought into my life, the way I have grown and continue to grow because of her loving care for me, and the way our relationship continues to evolve and change with time. I am so grateful that she came into my life when she did. And I am grateful for all of the teachers I have had and all of my teachers to come.

Me and Karen. Photo by Terri Simmons. Spring 2011.

The moral of the story (if there is one), is to be grateful for your teachers. And, to have a teacher! We all need an intentional teacher. I really believe this. It's too easy to become stagnant without one...we need an honest mirror to reflect back to us both our life-denying and life-enhancing habits...and we cannot reach our full potential through our own limited understandings alone. So if you need a teacher...put out the intention, find a path that you truly want to pursue, and (as I have been told by some teachers of my own), you and your teacher will inevitably find one another.

Giving Thanks

It's Thanksgiving. So...I've spent the day thinking about what I'm thankful for...and cooking pumpkin pie! Among a lot of things (I have a lot to be grateful for) I'll share a few.

I am so deeply thankful for my amazing, supportive family.

I am incredibly thankful for my loving husband.

I am thankful for the Earth and all of the beauty that surrounds me every day.

I am thankful for my ridiculously wonderful friends.

Photo by Rebecca Emily Drobis

I am thankful for our four legged friends and the lovely perspectives they give me.

I'm thankful for yoga, and my beloved teachers, and the new horizons my practice continuously brings into my life.

I am so grateful for the life that I have. Blessings and love to you all!

On Lolo Pass

I woke up Sunday morning feeling quite under the weather. But my dad, Ryan and I were planning on heading up to Lolo Pass for the first cross country ski of the season, and I simply couldn't resist. It was a bluebird day and it truly couldn't have been more magically beautiful. The sun was shimmering on the powdery snow in a way that has always made me imagine fairies dancing between the trees (o.k., a little dorky, but true...doesn't fresh snow make your imagination kick in?). Fresh powder, blue skies, and two of my favorite people in the world. What an amazing start to what promises to be an epic ski season!

Dad cutting his first tracks of the season.

A female pine grosbeak.

Lovin' it!

Coming on Winter

 "Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it."

Henry David Thoreau, 28 November 1858 journal entry

 

Since the time change, I come home every evening in the dark. I know this is not unique (poor me!), but it is new to me (my current and relatively new job is my first Monday-Friday "regular hours" job), and I'm doing my best to adjust. And while I really don't want to complain, I do have to say I spent the week feeling pretty uninspired. I've been sleeping longer than I would like, and my short stroll to the river every morning before work has surely not been fulfilling my need for time spent outside each day. This sort of winter lethargy is both a natural cycle that humans often don't realize we take part in, and also a challenge to face so as not to fall into the depths of torpor every time winter comes along. So, I am doing my best to get outside every day and notice the great beauty that surrounds me, even on a not-so-sunny day. I relish my weekends for the chance to spend more time immersing myself in nature.

The Missoula and Bitterroot Valleys got a couple of inches of snow yesterday and we experienced the first really-truly-bitingly-cold-windy-winter-day of the season. Two girls from Hellgate High School braved the cold of the Kim Williams Trail, the Hellgate winds gusting westward along the Clark Fork River, with a volunteer and myself. I run an "Outdoor Adventurers" club, and on a side note, two students is our current record for club attendance, which I believe tells you a lot about the low priority of spending time outside for teenagers of today. (I'm sure I'll touch on this subject again soon.) For now I'll just say that the girls were awesome and the day was wickedly cold, but the weather was exciting nonetheless. I really felt the childlike wonder set in and a deep appreciation for the coming of winter.

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
~Bill Morgan, Jr.

Today we awoke to a mostly sunny day, much to our delight. The river was as gorgeous as ever. I thought I'd share some pictures.

A pendulum of ice.

A winter dog at heart.

A suspended cupped nest--perhaps that of a warbling vireo.

The dipper that I mentioned in an earlier post.

Hope and Ali have their fuzzy winter coats.

Lolo Pond is totally frozen now.

Could they be more adorable?!

Eiger and Willie enjoying the warmth of the sun filtering in.

I'm looking forward to continuing to step into the rhythms of winter.

A Beautiful Day on the Bitterroot (in photos)

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

Mary Oliver

 

The snow-heavy clouds moving in.

The sun started peaking through.

A very happy Eiger!

The trees are almost bare now.

Look closer...there's an 18 (or so) in. mountain whitefish down there.

An old magpie nest.

A snowflake catches the fleeing light of the sun.

There has been a beaver keeping busy nearby lately.

My boys enjoying the beautiful Bitterroot.

A red tailed hawk soars high overhead.

Simply beautiful.

Just the tops of the trees hold a few leaves...and the snow begins to fall.

After a swim.

A red-naped sapsucker...

...with a busy red-breasted nuthatch...

The nuthatch checking us out...and also traveling with...

...a flock of black-capped chickadees. They all surrounding us at the end of our walk. They move so fast that they're hard to get a good picture of, so this is the best I could do after about 15 minutes of sitting in the middle of the flock during their busy feeding time.

Gratitude

It has been an absolutely gorgeous fall. We've had an unusual number of sunny days (or at least it seems that way), the colors have been spectacular and long lasting, and the wildlife has been abundant. I've been feeling an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude lately. Last night and the night before, as the glowing full moon illuminated the sky, I heard coyotes, maybe only 50 yards from our house, yipping, howling, and what can only be described as celebrating or rejoicing (I may be anthropomorphizing, but it's so hard to feel any other way about their joyful and wild calls once you've heard them). The raw beauty of that sound excites me, and makes me feel alive.

 The ducks and geese take advantage of the pond before it completely freezes over.

One of the reasons I love the transition of the seasons most is the changing presence of so many birds. Bald eagles have been flying over our house, announcing their presence with their long, shrill call, making their way to or from the river where they can be seen every day now, circling high above and perching on a now bare towering cottonwood. A lone, charcoal gray dipper sang on the bank of the river a few days ago as we walked by--we stopped to listen to the long, warbling, breathtakingly beautiful sound (scroll down on the link and listen to the call, it will enchant you). A flicker landed on the railing of our deck a couple of days ago and snuggled right up next to a bird statue that we have, looking toward the window and then pecking at pine cones in a nearby ponderosa. The black-capped chickadees have been more exuberant than ever in recent weeks, coming in flocks, and chirping and singing as they clear the trees of their seeds on their way to their wintering grounds. The great blue heron that spends most of its days near our house on the river continues to startle me as I round a corner and its enormous and slow flapping wings carry it above us. And the great horned owl has already begun its winter mating calls from the cottonwood stands at Lolo Pond. The wild mallards are still around and noisily quacking at Lolo Pond every morning when I walk by, but their numbers are dwindling as more migrate south every day. And every evening I get the great blessing of hearing Canada geese honking in great V's overhead--one of my favorite things about living near a river and in the migration path of so many waterfowl.

The sky has been dynamic and mesmerizing (as it so often is in Montana), and my heart is filled on a daily basis by way the lighting in the evening and early morning that makes everything look so alive and beautiful. The ponds are just beginning to freeze, sheets of ice breaking up into large plates by the afternoon, and in the morning, the fallen leaves hold a powdery, shimmering layer of frost from the gathering and settling of the night's cold heavy air. I am so grateful for the beauty that we get to experience living here near Lolo Pond and the Bitterroot River--and the diverse beauty of being here on this amazing planet.

And then, my dear friend Deanna sent me this link. It is very, very well worth the time it takes to watch it. My teacher posted this to her Facebook page and wrote, so clearly and beautifully (as usual): "Gratitude for this day, AS IT IS, nothing added. Just This."

This is incredibly powerful, isn't it? And for me, also incredibly auspicious in its timing. Gratitude has been a theme in my life lately, and one I want to stick around. I recently was reminded of the important practice of thinking of (or writing, or speaking) the things that you are grateful for when you wake up, on your way to work, before dinner, or before bed. This simple practice has transformed my days, and my life--I am going to make it a ritual in my life instead of letting it slip away as I have in the past. I hope all of you are able to do the same. Blessings of gratitude on this auspicious day!

Taking a Seat

"Taking a seat" below Never Laughs Mountain on the southeast side of Glacier National Park...a place and a practice that brings me to my Heart.

 

I just finished a lovely yoga practice entitled "Take Your Seat" with an incredible teacher, Noah Maze; and I also took a class last night with a focus on coming into your Heart with a teacher who has quickly made her way into my heart, Elena Brower. These two classes touched something in me, as they so often do. YogaGlo has been an important part of my life lately because it has kept me connected to very skilled yoga instructors in a time when I have had difficulty attending regular yoga classes. Of course, in-person yoga classes and workshops have been what have transformed my practice the most. Nothing can replace having a teacher in a room with you, especially when you're a beginner--but YogaGlo has offered me a way to stay connected to the teachings, and I am incredibly grateful for that. I'm not here to advertise for YogaGlo, but I will speak to the importance of steady practice; whether that means sitting by the river for fifteen minutes every day or doing yoga for some amount of time regularly. Steady practice is ultimately what allows you to remain in your Heart through whatever comes up and does its best to distract you.

As I begin to think about Monday and the week ahead of me, I start to feel uprooted. Today I became totally unnecessarily verbally aggressive with Ryan a couple of times for (now that I think of it) nothing at all except for anxiety about the 10,000 things to come. This is what happens when I move from my seat, in my Heart, to the periphery, in my mind. I've notice within my body lately how physical that uprooting is. I become harder--I tense the muscles in my face and in my core, my shoulders rise up, and my breathing becomes faster and more shallow. When I am able to take a seat in my Heart, I settle back, I become more expansive, my face relaxes, and I am softer, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I know a lot of people who may scoff at the idea of being able to "be" in one's heart, seeing it only as a physical thing--a muscle and organ that pumps blood. But, like so many other spiritual things, words sometimes have to fill a really tall order. The Heart is something much greater, and if you've felt it, you know what I mean (give it the word Heart or not, it doesn't really matter--but I will say that in the teachings of yoga and in my own experience, it does reside approximately where the physical heart resides). The Heart I'm speaking of is the expansive feeling you get when you are taking in a beautiful sight, listening to children playing or a powerful song, or getting to take part in making someone else's life more joyful for a time. It's something I think everyone has experienced, whether they have a name for it or not. The difficult part is staying there.

Most of us have this habit--of residing in our mind a whole lot more than our Heart--and I think the way modern life has a lot to do with that. There are a lot of distractions (technology, media), a lot of pressures (Americans work more hours than any other developed nation, and for many of us, it's just to get by), and not a lot of encouragement in modern American culture to connect to what is Real. I would say this tendency is very closely connected to the tendency Americans have to change our place of residence a lot (the average American moves 11.7 times in a lifetime!). The idea of being rooted in a place is quickly being replaced by the desire to bounce around until we find "happiness"--or perhaps more often, wealth. And the funny thing is, in my experience it's being rooted in a place that allows me to really take a seat in my Heart. I'm not saying you can't move around and be in your Heart at the same time. In fact, in the yoga class I just took with Noah Maze, he spoke of the importance of your asana, or your body, or your Heart, being your Home; that Home should be portable and accessible wherever you are, like the home of a turtle that moves with them on their back. But, as someone who believes strongly in the importance of Place, I think we shouldn't underestimate the power of staying. Most people aren't equipped to move around constantly and stay plugged in to the Source. Hell, most people aren't equipped to stay in one place and stay plugged in to the Source. I am one of the "most" that I speak of!

But, let's just say that we stopped moving around all the time--physically, we found a home and got to know it deeply, and raised our children there, and invested our energy there instead of moving as soon as we felt discontent--and spiritually, we stuck to our teachings (non-dogmatically, of course) and let them grow and develop with time instead of switching to the next belief system when it got uncomfortable. Would we then be more able to reside in our Hearts? Can you imagine a world where we were all connected to the Source, all the time? There would be so much more laughter, kindness, and beauty! What a thought! I'm not saying if everyone lived in one place for their whole life we would know world peace. I definitely know many people who move around the country and the world (in fact, many very amazing yoga teachers), and stay tapped in a whole lot more than some people I know who have never moved an inch from their home. But, I do think there's something to say about staying; about rooting yourself physically so that you can truly take a seat in your Heart. For some, that may mean having a steady practice that roots you to the Source (meditation, church, asana, , etc.). But for those who have not had the great blessing of having a teacher or a practice that brings you Home, maybe that means rooting yourself physically to the Earth and becoming a part of one Place that you can forever call Home. It's a thought.

Seasons of Wonder

The Bitterroot River on my daily walk near my home.
 
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. 

 Albert Einstein

I used to dread winters. I hated being cold, feeling forced to limit my outside activity because of fear of falling on the ice, having to layer up and look like a walking Michelin man, and I was terrified of driving. I admit, I still find myself avoiding the thought of the "ice and inversion season" that takes over the Missoula Valley for two or three months every year. But regardless of the inconveniences that inevitably accompany the deep of winter, the more present I become, the more I appreciate it for its own unique beauty. I adapt by doing simple things like driving slower, cooking eating seasonal food, cherishing the comfort and warmth of my home, and appreciating the feel of invigorating and crisp winter air on my skin and in my lungs.

I recently thought to myself that if there is one thing that I would miss the most if I was no longer able to live here on this spectacular Earth, it would be the amazing blessing of being able to observe the way the world transforms with the changes of seasons. Today it was a crisp kind of cold all day. The trees have dropped over half of their leaves, quietly passing the unspoken mid-point between fall and winter. I felt a slight sense of sadness to be saying goodbye to the colors--I love fall, perhaps more than any other season (if I could pick a favorite, that is)--but only in the way one feels sadness when leaving a place that you know you will return to, and not so long from now.

The changes that occur in the world around me are so alive, so dynamic, and so fascinating. But many of these shifts are subtle, and in order to notice them, one must know a place well. Over time, I watch the the way one large rock just off of the shore that I pass on my daily walk on the Bitterroot bends and rolls the river over its round body differently as the water level fluctuates, from the swift depth after a rush of snow melt in the late spring to the slow shallowness after the drying of the summer. I know seasons by how the feeling of the world transforms--from the quiet settling of the autumn to the bright and exuberant popping of the early summer.  In my experience, when I commit my attention to the ways the natural world and its inhabitants (including humans) adapt to the changes in how the Sun shines upon our little section of the Earth, it becomes impossible to not feel an incredible sense of wonder for any particular part of this truly marvelous cycle.

Eiger (and Love)

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. 

Chief Seattle

My job can be difficult. It is an amazing amount of fun at times, and it is incredibly fulfilling, but sometimes when I come home I am absolutely drained. To back up a little, I am a "Youth Development Coordinator" at Hellgate High School for a drug and alcohol prevention-focused organization called the Flagship Program. I coordinate after school programs, spend a lot of time just being there for the kids, and I am responsible for many of the events that happen at the school. It's a great job. In fact, I spent my day today teaching yoga to 120 kids (give or take) for P.E. classes, which tells you how wonderful and flexible my job can be. I feel incredibly fortunate to be doing such meaningful work. However, today is one of those days that I came home totally exhausted. Working with so many people on a regular basis, especially emotional teenagers, can be an energy drain. I haven't quite figured out the boundaries and practices involved in, as my yoga instructor and mentor Karen Sprute-Francovich said in a recent blog post, staying "tethered by a strong chord to what lives in the middle." I hope that with time and continued practice I will find that ability.

But somehow, when I come home, the stress and anxiety of my day often all melts away. Nowadays, my favorite thing in the world is returning from a long day to our "long house" (fancy name for a single-wide) to my husband, Ryan, and my dog, Eiger. Ryan is my best friend and the greatest source of joy in my life. But Eiger is something else. He makes me laugh constantly and is endless source of love and devotion. So I think now is a good time for a story about one of the great animal-loves-of-my-life. This is a picture of the big guy from this summer:

Yes, he is incredibly adorable and ridiculously loveable (I am biased, but seriously!). He's a big, healthy, happy dog now. But his beginnings were not so great, to say the least.

Ryan is from East Glacier Park, Montana (you will learn much, much more about this truly special place in the not-so-distant future--more to come!). We lived there for three summers before deciding to do the grad school thing in Missoula. The summer we were married, 2010, I was working at the store in town and finding LOTS of puppies. It was a little ridiculous. I knew I had found the right man for me when he simply rolled his eyes each time I brought a new puppy home to our 18' trailer we were living in on Ryan's grandmother's property. It was literally about one or two puppies a week all summer. We found homes for most of them through an incredible network of inspiring, dedicated animal lovers in the wonderful town of East Glacier. But when a coworker of mine found Eiger outside and came in saying "Ashley, I found another puppy," I had a feeling this would be the one we would actually keep. And the second I met him, I fell hard. He was absolutely filthy, and after feeding him and sending him for a bath and some love from my amazing dog rescuer friend Deb while I finished up my shift, I went to pick him up. The first thing he did when I put him down in the yard was poop plastic bags and rocks. He was terrified of people, and I heard later that he had been frequenting the local bar, the Trailhead. He was desperate.

 Here he is looking cleaned up and feeling a whole lot better than when we first found him.

Anyway, he went on to become incredibly sick. I was sure he would die (I thought he had parvo, which was going around town at the time). I was an absolute wreck the day Ryan took him to the vet outside of Cut Bank (who is a saint) while I was mentally tortured for an entire 12 hour shift at the store. It turned out it wasn't parvo, thank God, and we slowly nursed him back to health. I can only imagine the kinds of things he was fighting in that little body of his.

We brought him back to Missoula for school, and despite a really touchy stomach, he got stronger and bigger all the time. Until, at about 6 months old, he completely fractured his fibula and tibia running up icy stairs while he was playing at my parents' house. After an (ah hem) almost $2,000 surgery, he was o.k. In fact, his leg is great now thanks to an awesome team at Patty Prado's office.

Poor photo quality, but you get the point! 

Needless to say, Eiger is a success story. I tell this story not just because Ryan and I love him a ridiculous amount, but also because I think it speaks to the Power of Love. Who knows what would have happened to Eiger without a few people with big hearts getting involved? Each and every life that crosses our path is an opportunity to do something good--something that helps heal and brings more love into the world. Why, then, do we so often pass up these opportunities? Why not approach life with an Open Heart? What are we so afraid of?

Today on the river taking in the breathtaking fall colors and LOVING my pup.