Attitude of Gratitude – February 2019

At the end of every yoga class, I always ask my students to take a moment of gratitude. I offer up gratitude for themselves for showing up and their bodies for being present in the practice, but then I also offer up a moment of gratitude for any other aspect of their lives. I do this because I truly believe and have seen in myself, the way an attitude of gratitude can truly change my life. This is gratitude for myself, for the people in my life, for my job and abundance, for being able to share myself, my truth and my story – and that’s only the beginning. 

Because I believe so strongly in an attitude of gratitude, we celebrate the final Monday of the month by focusing on gratitude. For me this means diving into my daily gratitude journal and picking out a few things to share. So let’s go….

Teaching yoga

This practice, as a student and as a teacher, is so transformative for me. It’s one of those things that I will never take for granted. This month was especially difficult on my heart but when I teach yoga, I am able to settle right back into myself and for the length of that class, I’m present once again, forgetting about any of those fears, worries, and insecurities. I’m able to hold space for my student to dive into their own practice and that energy transforms me just as much as it does them.

Giving back

One of the things I’ve devoted to this year is giving back every single month. That may be with my time, energy, and finances. I’m trying to be especially mindful of my budget this year and feel back on track with my financial stability, but even a small donation feels so good in my heart. We’re also working on giving back at work this year, so I arranged for my team to color supper sacks for the GR local charity, Kids Food Basket. Helping those in need, also helps us. It’s been a beautiful reminder.

Poncho making improvements 

We still have a lot of areas to work and improve upon, but especially last week the biggest improvement I’ve seen was with his barking while I’m gone. I knew it would take some time and I’m grateful for neighbors who were patient as we figured things out but we can make it through several hours before the noise detection alerts come through on my phone. Even then, those are a LOT less. I threw him off a bit on Thursday as I worked from home since his daycare was full and he was noisy quite a bit while I was teaching yoga, but it’s still improvement! We started our obedience classes last week and I’m hoping that will help us both to keep learning and communicating better.

Launching TriYoga with Katie

This was really scary for me, but it’s been amazing. Even more so, I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback! At this point it is mostly friends and family I think that are watching, but they’re also sharing it with others and I couldn’t be more grateful. I’m optimistic that this is truly going to help me continue to build the life that I want and dream for myself. 

Listening to my intuition

That may be a bit vague, but after many, many months (maybe nearly a year?!) of feeling like I needed to make a change, I finally took the step to come off hormonal birth control. I could tell it was messing with my anxiety and I really didn’t like it. I had a lot of fear about coming off, especially as someone with pretty severe endometriosis, but it was time to take the leap. Aside from the fact that I know hormonal birth control is not necessarily the greatest thing for a woman’s physical health in many instances, this was about my mental health and it was time I put that FIRST and foremost. I’m giving myself some time to “detox” and then plan to start working through getting myself regulated to a normal cycle. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you. More please.

What are you grateful for this month?