Category: Yoga
Saturday, Aug 23, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Backyard, Birthdays, Books, Chores, Dream, Driving, Exercise, Family, Friends, Fun, Holidays, House, Job, Mothering, Peace, Photos, Reading, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Writing, Yoga |
Back yard, new “room,” eldest used this a lot to hang out with friends. Eldest is moving to Montreal in less than a week to start an MA at Concordia (in English Lit!).
We made the annual trip to the farm, a bit later than usual, because a) I got sick as soon as school ended and b) the youngest had a soccer tournament. So this marks mid-July. No homework was burned, but we had a lot of fun playing Dutch Blitz around the kitchen table. We filled the bedrooms and a tent. It was ridiculously hot.
Our first week at the cottage. I’d gotten a reasonable amount of writing / editing done during the week between farm and cottage, so I didn’t put pressure on myself to do a lot of “work.”
We hosted guests — family — and we squeezed a lot of people into what amounts to 3 bedrooms and a bunkie. Still very hot. Ideal for kayaking and swimming. I got some good thinking done while out on the lake. Returned home inspired and with a map for finishing the final third of Begin.
Immediately upon returning home from the cottage, I did a mountain of laundry and didn’t unpack my bag. Took off solo to stay at a friend’s cottage for a few nights. She made me dinner, and I spent an entire day (and evening) writing. Made enormous progress. Ate really good vegan meals. Soaked in Lake Huron. Forgot to take photos. I woke early on the final morning and sat in bed reading Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres till it was time to sort myself and head home. Lots of reading this summer. Reading upon waking is such a summer luxury … could be a Saturday luxury too, now that I think of it. What translates from summer to fall?
This will seem like a minor accomplishment, but I am very proud of the fact that I cleaned the front porch. It was a boiling hot day and I scrubbed green mold till it was (mostly) gone. In the proud-of-it category, I also helped my mom with her move home after months at a rehab hospital, and took my dad to a bunch of medical appointments, and got my youngest up to camp for a counsellor-in-training program, and went to the dentist. I did not get a new job (despite some efforts in that direction; as I approach a return to the library this Monday, I’m feeling like all has turned out as it should).
Got my youngest back to camp for a week of practicum. Saw a lot of rural Ontario from inside an air-conditioned vehicle this summer.
My second youngest celebrated a big birthday, several times over. There was the ice cream sandwich celebration. There was also the family dinner out celebration and the made-her-own-birthday cake celebration, and probably a few more I’ve forgotten. She will be living at home this fall, going into her third year of university. We’ll have a small cohort of the two youngest kids and the middle-aged dog, and hopefully a lot of their friends will drop in and hang out and stay for supper (my favourite favourite thing about being a parent is feeding a bunch of young people a spontaneous meal; literally nothing can make me happier).
Eldest moved a bunch of stuff to Montreal with his girlfriend. Luckily she has a vehicle. He will be taking his bike to Montreal, but won’t have a car of his own.
Second eldest will have a vehicle – our little “chub-chub.” They’ve just moved (in the opposite direction and across a national border) to start a PhD in Medieval Studies at Notre Dame. South Bend, Indiana does not have the same public transit infrastructure as Montreal.
Somehow, despite birthday dinners and moving and appointments, I got myself back to the farm with my friend Tasneem for a few days to finish the novel revision. Mission accomplished, and in good company. We even went to Lake Huron for an evening swim. It was very hot.
Last week before work, back at the cottage with a slightly different configuration. A bit of hosting, multiple hot dog meals, my dad tagged along for the whole week. In my favourite chair in the back bedroom, I finished-finished Begin, going through every word with a fine-toothed comb, and when that was done, I sent it to my editor. Good job, sailor Carrie.
Oh summer. I’ve soaked in the lake every day that I possibly can. I’ve journaled, and done art therapy, and eaten some fantastic peaches and tomato sandwiches. I’ve done yoga on the dock, spin classes, weight classes, pilates, and walked with friends. I haven’t water coloured as much as I’d hoped, but perhaps that will start again this fall, when I have a small and captive but appreciative audience of kindergarteners, and a bulletin board to decorate.
My library hours this fall will give me an extra two hours each afternoon to write, and I aim to do so. It’s been delightful this summer to find strategies for writing and surviving the writing (it’s physical, my body gets incredibly restless sitting for hours, and my mind writhes with discomfort to be in-between and in-the-unknown; what I relearned this summer is that it’s all okay, so long as I release that energy in positive ways, and trust the process.)
My favourite interchange this summer came when I was helping my mom up our front steps. She said, “You are so strong!” and my second eldest exclaimed, “Yes, isn’t she?” I felt seen and honoured, as I am this very moment in time; and that will change, but for now, I am filled with gratitude for the strength, physical, mental, spiritual, that helps me steady myself, and even sometimes, because I’m so very very fortunate, those around me. What privilege. What a luxury.
The sun does its work, even in the hallway of a school. This was the bulletin board outside the library when I’d taken everything off from the past school year. What will replace it this coming school year? It’s just one of the little things I’m excited to discover, and looking forward to this fall. Let the brainstorming begin.
xo, Carrie
Sunday, Mar 16, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Good News, Holidays, Peace, Reading, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Writing, Yoga |
Note: This post was written several days ago. I kept my laptop off wifi in order to avoid distraction, so I’m posting it only now that I’m home again.
I’ve spent almost seven full days at the farm (my brother and sister-in-law’s, with all thanks to them for their generosity). These seven days have been a true retreat, for mind and body and spirit and emotions. I was close to breaking that last week of work before March break, ground down by responsibilities and duties and commitments, all of which I love and have chosen freely (nearly all!); but which require a volume of attention that even great discipline and desire cannot meet.
I came to the farm to write.
I came with a bit of a plan: a novel manuscript to revise, with, most blessedly, the support of a new editor and publisher (the deal has not been inked, so I will touch wood and wait to share more news till it’s official).
I also came to the farm depleted. Knowing I was depleted and exhausted and strained.
I came to the farm wanting to play. I didn’t come to “work” on my book, I came to play with the material. And this book—my 16th century book, as I often call it—has so much material to play with. The language, the weather, the rhyming, the smells, the herbs, the meat, the smoke, the streets running with raw sewage, the animals, the screw press, the tenements, the lanes and alleyways, the river, the relationships, the sacred and the profane, art and authorship and anonymity.
A person can’t play if she’s depleted, exhausted, strained.
Such weariness bleeds through the body, and numbs the senses. There’s a flatness, tears leak through, but feel obscure or obscuring, a disconnected release. In the week or so before coming to the farm, I’d noticed myself withdrawing, even from friends, as I put my head down and completed the basics (which include routines I consider to be healthy and caring, like starting the day with exercise and meditation, preparing good lunches to eat at work, and spending time with my family).
I gave myself permission, when I arrived at the farm on Saturday, early afternoon, to slow down.
And that has been at the crux of my reflections, here at the farm.
I noticed that it was difficult to slow down. I noticed that I wanted to fill the quiet with noise: podcasts, radio, YouTube. More than that, I wanted to be entertained. In stillness, in quiet, alone, I felt starved for some interruption that would distract me.
I noticed these needs and desires. I questioned them. There were times when I let myself be distracted. But I also encouraged myself to try going without the noise, even just for a few minutes. The minutes inevitably stretched. Gently, forgiving myself when I reached for my cellphone, I eased myself over the threshold into the quiet, again and again.
This morning, my last morning here at the farm for awhile, I did yoga (my cellphone open, Yoga with Adriene guiding me through day 4 of her recent Prana series). As I do every morning, I followed my breath. I paired breath to movement. I noticed how much attention I could give to different parts of myself—my feet, my shoulders, my pelvis. Deep in this attention, my mind accepted the quiet. It always does.
For my meditation, I read a long chapter in Braiding Sweetgrass (the young adult version). It was like this chapter had heard me praying to slow down. The chapter is called “Allegiance to Gratitude,” and Robin Wall Kimmerer (and Monique Gray Smith, who adapted this version), and the illustrations of Nicole Neidhardt come together to illuminate the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address. The author(s) ask us to consider what it means to start each morning with gratitude—with a ritual of thanksgiving for the land, each other, and all of creation. The ritual is slow. It takes the time that it takes. It is also punctuated with the refrain, Now our minds are one. “Imagine,” the author(s) write, “being raised in a culture in which gratitude is the first priority.”
Imagine.
Let me begin and end with gratitude.
I am thankful for my brother and sister-in-law who open this farmhouse to me, and who restored it with such care, and who continue to care for this peaceful, cozy, calming, healing place. I am thankful for a family-sized lasagna that fed me almost the entire week. I am thankful for this table at which I’ve sat to eat and to read and to write. My eating and reading chair is to my right. I’m sitting now in the writing chair. Both face the same window, with plants on the sill, and flies buzzing in the sunshine. I am thankful for fresh air and a gravel road on which to walk, to clear my mind. I am thankful for winding down time in the warm living-room, with a puzzle and a deliciously silly Canadian TV show (Pretty Hard Cases; CBC, season 3 available on YouTube). I am grateful for sleep and rest.
I played a lot this week. I accomplished what I’d set out to do. The novel will take more time, more play, more squishing and shaping of its materials.
I’m preparing to pack up and return home, where I’ll again have too much to do—so much of which I love and cherish and don’t want to set down. Can I stretch time? Or slow it? Can I slow time for others, with whom I share space? What allows me to slow my mind, to listen deeply, to attend with love, and to resist distraction?
Begin with gratitude. Return to gratitude. Cherish and take responsibility for my gifts. Ask: I am grateful for____? Is ___ grateful for me in return? And if not, how can I balance that relationship, so that it becomes mutual?
When I love my writing, and bring to it my attention, with appreciation for its delights, I sense it loving me in return, and filling me with joy. And that is what I want to share—deep abiding thanks for imagination, story, the healing properties of narrative and image, and the visceral sensual pleasure of language itself.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Feb 13, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Library, Lists, Manifest, Meditation, Source, Space, Spirit, Winter, Word of the Year, Work, Writing, Yoga |
The creative life — what is it? Where does it live? How is it fed? These are my ever-questions, or, more accurately, fodder for ever-explorations and experiments. How does creativity squeeze itself into the gaps and cracks of every day existence; or is it so interwoven with every day existence as to be indistinguishable from it? Or are these formulations simply part of a greater whole? Creativity burrowing in gaps and cracks and spreading like moss or mold or weeds to inhabit the all of things.
There is no separation between my expressions of every day self and creative self. To exist in the world is to risk exposure, transformation. The risk of exposure is that it may harden me — the defended me — to rigidity or certainty, through fear. But the alternative seems riskier: without exposure to contradictory paths and ideas and ways of being, I become the most boring and limited version of myself, gazing into a self-reflecting mirror, defending what I see at the cost of real connection. To risk transformation is to risk becoming someone I won’t/don’t entirely recognize. But to try to stay the same is death, or zombie-hood, or cynicism, isn’t it?
I’m sorry, this is oddly theoretical. I wanted to write about practical steps, tasks, routines, choices. The actions that make possible the pursuit of beauty.
What if the purpose of life is to seek beauty?
Where do I find beauty? In order to seek it? And what do I do with it when I find it?
Beauty appears to me in so many forms, and in so many interactions. I know it by the delight it brings; or the tears. I know it by the way it changes time, softens and broadens it. Beauty is always available, and that is why every day existence is indistinguishable from the creative life, in my own experience. There are only a few rules (or considerations) to follow. Beauty happens in the living of it. It is naturally occurring and always present, but not always visible. It is easy to miss. Easiest to miss when distracted. Busy. Cut off from the world. The cellphone (standing in for our digital lives) has made it easier to miss altogether, or to confuse with a simulacrum. Beauty happens, too, in the mind that inhabits the body (not the mind that lives inside a screen). I’m not convinced that beauty happens here, on my blog, as I type these words, but this space allows me to reflect on its existence. I don’t know why I need to do this thing: this turning of one thing into another, this keeping of ideas and emotions inside the hard form of words.
But words — they’re not hard, not to me. They’re malleable and slippery and musical. They are the material of play — or one of the materials, and one of my most reliable. We dance together. Words dart under the surface and burst through it, carrying an image, a roar, a need.
To seek beauty, I …
practice moving my body in concert with my breath (yoga, meditation, gym-time)
invite play and spontaneity in every possible forum (bulletin board artwork, notebook scribbles, singing in the car)
surrender to the task at hand, no matter how menial (fixing books, cleaning the bathroom)
practice listening, tuck my phone out of sight and out of mind (coffee with my mom, walks with friends)
slow down, allow for space to open (speaking in front of a group, leading meetings)
practice humility by staying attuned to the needs of others (asking questions, looking into a child’s eyes)
fill my spaces with living beings (plants, children & their friends, dog, strangers, family, friends)
care for my body, challenge my mind, trust my heart, honour spirit (seeking a balance: to stretch & rest, write & read, socialize & connect, worship & reflect)
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jul 15, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Family, Fire, Friends, Fun, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Summer, Yoga |
In April, I embarked on a “spring burst”, aka return to the gym, with the initial intention of spending a month trying out spin and weights classes, in an effort to boost my cardio and strength.
I was a runner for many years. But it’s high-impact, and I am a woman well into middle age, and no amount of yoga seemed to help with the pain that would flare while running, even relatively short distances. It’s hard to stop doing something you love, and there is no replacement for the runner’s high, or being outside on a misty morning before the world has woken up. But. I’m trying to listen to my body and be softer with myself, so I let the running go (mostly). As of this spring, I’d been doing yoga twice a day for at least a year, and meditation regularly, and an occasional weights class with friends. Sometimes I’d bike to work. But suffice it to say, there came a moment in my weights-class-with-friends when I was gasping for air, my heart racing, and the thought arose: gee, I could really use some more cardio in my life.
Ergo: Carrie’s spring burst.
The first spin class damn near killed me, mostly because I go hard, no matter the challenge. I almost fell off my bike. I was light-headed, panting, dripping sweat, and not even close to keeping up with the instructor’s choreo directions. Yes, I go to a gym where the spin classes have choreo; and yes, this adds a certain soupçon of danger and thrill to each sweaty, fast-paced, rhythmically pumped up class—but that’s why I return, to be frank: to be challenged, mentally and physically, to occasionally reach a goal I’ve set or smile at myself while trying. I also look forward to the moment in each class where my worries vanish into the effort, and my mind goes quiet.
My spring burst has stretched into a summer of strength, or maybe a summer of sweat (haven’t come up with a title yet).
I’ve tried every available class, from weights to power to pilates to yoga to the hilarious humiliation of a what seemed like an aerobics class to boxing. As mentioned, I throw myself in deep, and am therefore currently in gym rat mode. It’s not that other things aren’t happening, social and emotional. But this is the place I’m returning to, as a form of a vacation, to give my mind rest, and to enjoy my body. Weight training is apparently critical during the peri-menopause / menopause era; and that’s me. Age happens, and with age, limitations; yet my body and mind can adapt and learn new things.
Summer loving. Bougie gym summer.
We aren’t travelling very far this summer. The kids are all living at home. The schools are closed, so I don’t have a job in the library for nine or ten weeks (haven’t done the math). I’m trying to revise a book manuscript, but honestly, if I do so, it will only be because it makes sense for my mental health, and not any other reason. The costs of artistic ambition seem altogether too steep; and this is not a new Alice-Munro-revelations-thought for me either, though has probably been somewhat cemented by that. I’ve long wondered and worried about the wisdom (for myself personally) of pouring so much energy and time and attention into what amounts to a series of personal passion projects—at times I would feel possessed, as if I was trying to cure an obsession or compulsion with novel-writing. And maybe it did help, for awhile—I have no regrets. I’m proud of my accomplishments. And—and! I hope for something quite different: a humble legacy of love and care, for strong and lasting connections and relationships, built on trust and kindness and open doors.
That’s my aim. That’s my over-arching goal.
What I’m finding is that if I prioritize connections, serving and feeding relationships, including paying attention to the the feelings and sensations in my own body, I can’t go wrong. The discomfort and disorientation of being disconnected, not in a right relationship, is a powerful cue for change. This might mean entering into difficult conversations. This might mean being open to hearing hard truths. This might mean hearing “no,” when I’d prefer to hear “yes!” It might mean shifting direction, allowing my priorities to shift too. Whatever possibilities lie before me, I hope to choose connection.
Summer delight. Summer solace. Summer song.
xo, Carrie
Sunday, Jan 14, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Family, Friends, Kids, Library, Manifest, Meditation, Parenting, Play, Sick, Source, Word of the Year, Work, Writing, Yoga |
I’ve been sick. The new year is off to a slow and hacking start. But— I’ve also been dreaming of my projects for this coming year, and making paper crafts of favourite book characters for my library bulletin boards (see below), and revising a manuscript, with what feels like contentment rather than panic.
Okay, so I haven’t been well enough to go for a run, or even very man walks, but yoga is on all but the most fevered of days. And the house has been wonderfully full of children and friends of children, visiting or hanging out or needing a temporary home base for rest and recovery (our two sons currently live here full-time). I am content in a full house. It gives me great pleasure to come downstairs and discover several teenage boys making breakfast in my kitchen. I’m happiest when visitors feel comfortable enough to make their own food, and come and go as they please. I don’t try to “host” and that’s probably why sharing space doesn’t feel onerous or invasive. I grew up in a crowded house, with five siblings and many visitors coming and going, including guests who lived with our family for months at a time. I prefer the bustle. I also know how go to my own space and unwind.
I’ve been thinking about the word “livelihood.” It’s not my word of the year (still to come!), but it reflects, more than other words related to money-earning, my relationship to working and to sharing resources. A livelihood is enough to get by on. It isn’t focused on earning riches or accumulating wealth, rather it represents the comfort of enough. A livelihood also seems quite flexible: it doesn’t have to be a vocation or even a career. It’s a means to an end—a livelihood helps support yourself and your family and those you share your resources with. Others in your family circle or economic community can share in your livelihood, and contribute to a shared livelihood. What constitutes a livelihood changes as you change.
I begin this new year thinking about sharing resources.
I think about the ways in which sharing makes all aspects of life easier.
I want to live with ease. I’m beginning to understand that living with ease involves both support from within and support from without. An overarching theme in my own life has been the creation of structures and practices that strengthen and feed my inner resources (and my posture, my lungs and heart, my muscles!), but I’ve experienced this in collaboration with others. I’m not doing this alone—as vital to my inner strength are the friendships and relationships that hold me up, as I hope to hold others up in return.
As needed.
Sometimes it’s my turn to be held. Sometimes I have the privilege of holding. And sometimes I’m part of a fun and hilarious dance, no holding or lifting required.
All for now. Thank you for reading along.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Dec 16, 2023 | Art, Big Thoughts, Current events, Fire, Fun, Good News, Job, Library, Organizing, Play, Reading, School, Source, Space, Spirit, Success, Winter, Word of the Year, Work, Yoga |
I have been drawing and writing again: four weeks in my new position at a school library and creative energy has returned — it isn’t all being used on the job. In fact, working in the library seems to energize and soothe me in equal measure. The space is mine to play with, building on themes, displaying books, decorating with paper crafts (bulletin boards and such, see example above — not my forte, but I’ll learn!), reading stories to classes, and finding tasks for the many many library helpers (close to 30 grade 5/6 students) who the previous library clerk had brought in. The space has a wall of windows, and when I unlock the door and walk in every morning, I feel a sense of excitement and gratitude.
I love to put things in order. A library that is being used properly will forever give me things to put in order. And I LOVE reading to children and interacting with children.
Yet I also recognize and honour that the decision to change course took courage and did not feel straightforward or easy — it was painful to leave the students and staff and those fulfilling relationships at my previous school. I miss them.
There are situations and experiences that may not be healthy for us, or suited to true needs, long-term, but may nevertheless be valuable and wonderful in the moment. To leave something is not to diminish its worth.
Last year (2022), I focused on what I was feeling, trying to understand better the underlying sensations and emotions that were fuelling my decision-making and moods and interactions (often without my awareness), and this year (2023) I’ve focused on identifying my needs—so that I am better able to meet those needs, and not expect others to meet them for me. It’s a bit counterintuitive, but when I know what I need, I become less needy.
But I don’t always know what I need. Or I think I need a particular something, when really, what would satisfy and fill me is something else quite different.
I didn’t write much this fall; my creative spark vanished. I couldn’t find it, and didn’t even want to, particularly, or care much. All my creative energy went into problem solving at work—and I liked it, in many ways, because it made me feel useful and mildly heroic, which writing and drawing never really does, to be perfectly honest; but it was a sacrifice that ultimately was making me very sad, on some fundamental level. My rational mind didn’t notice or care, but my body did, my heart did, my guts did, my intuition noticed: and Sad Carrie was not really helping anyone.
What I was missing more than anything, what I needed, was my creative spark. I didn’t consciously know this till the spark reappeared.
Every morning before going to my new library job, I have time (and energy and the desire) to draw and write—and so I do. And the pleasure it gives me is without measure. There’s no purpose to it other than joy. No use. No rational worth or monetary value.
I’ve been reunited with this joyful part of myself.
To be joyful in the world is such a gift. Joy isn’t blind or ignorant, and joy doesn’t ignore suffering; it bubbles out of ordinary encounters, it is born of gratitude and grace, and interior space, which allows a person the bandwidth to be attuned outwardly, or open somehow, sensing and knowing the sacredness of every interaction and experience — that is what I mean by joy.
Joy can’t be manufactured, but it can be quietly drained from the body and mind by overwhelm and exhaustion. You can’t meditate yourself into a place of joy when you are drowning. The collective message to people in overwhelm and exhaustion and burnout and grief, drowning under a weight of responsibilities and impossible tasks, is: save yourselves! Do some yoga, or be more mindful, or whatever “wellness” trend is being pushed at the moment. I love yoga, and I appreciate the value of mindfulness; but when drowning in overwhelm, there isn’t a person on planet earth who can meditate themselves back to joy. Maybe to temporary relief of symptoms; maybe to a hope for a different path, or a glimpse at possibilities; but when the light goes out, it’s dark.
What lights your creative spark?
What are you feeling?
What are your feelings telling you about your needs?
What do you need?
Food, shelter, health, safety. What about ease? What brings you ease, and how does your ease express itself? How do you live when life is not such a struggle? How does your joy appear? How do you know when you are joyful?
My ease bubbles out in laughter. My ease fills a page with colour and lines. My ease delights in reading a book to a group of children and listening to their comments and questions.
May you be be safe. May you be healthy. May you be happy. May you live with ease.
xo, Carrie
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