I have been quiet here lately. I am in the “in between”. I feel like a caterpillar in the cocoon stage, and I’m not quite ready to step out and share my words. I have jumped off the proverbial cliff and I am in the precious and swift moments of glorious freefall. I am grinning with the excitement of it all, but I am not sure what the landing looks like yet. I’m letting it come, I’m trusting it to be whatever I need.

One thing I’ve always loved is driving in the rain, the moment when the car reaches an overpass. And you go from the sound of torrential downpour to complete silence for just a few seconds. Then back to what seems like tremendous sound. That is where I am, in the sweet silence that only lasts a short while, enjoying it before the moment passes.

So in the meantime, let me share with you a passage that I read the other day from a book called “What I Wish For You” by Patti Digh:

“Experience. Dream. Risk. Close your eyes and jump. Enjoy the free fall. Choose exhiliration over comfort. Choose magic over predictability. Choose potential over safety.

Wake up to the magic of everyday life. Make friends with your intuition. Trust your gut. Discover the beauty of uncertainty. Know yourself fully before you make promises to another.

Make millions of mistakes so that you will know how to choose what you really need. Know when to hold on and when to let go. Love hard and often and without reservation.

Seek knowledge. Open yourself to possibility. Keep your heart open, your head high, and your spirit free. Embrace your darkness along with your light. Be wrong every once in a while, and don’t be afraid to admit it. Awaken to the brilliance in ordinary moments.

Tell the truth about yourself no matter what the cost. Own your reality without apology. See goodness in the world. Be bold. Be fierce. Be grateful. Be wild, crazy, and gloriously free. Be you.

Go now, and live.”

I was in the car yesterday morning, making the 45 minute drive to the studio for what felt like the millionth time. I was thinking about the classes that I was on my way to teach. Monday mornings start with Power Yoga at 9:30am, and it hasn’t been the most popular time slot lately. Apparently, nobody wants to get out of bed first thing on Monday morning and come in to sweat their @*$ off with me… So anyway, I was driving in and thinking about whether or not anyone was going to come to class that morning. Worrying. And I realized, that for all of my efforts to remain present, that was not what was happening for me in my regular day to day. It was such a habit to let my thoughts wander when I was driving, that I wasn’t allowing myself to be clear mentally and just DRIVE.

Now, when I teach lately, and when I practice, I’ve been focusing quite a bit on the concept of being present. What does it mean to be present? And how often are we actually accomplishing that?How does being present change our experience in life?

In our culture, we are taught that it is responsible to plan for the future. We think about what we will do next, when we will do it. We save for the future, when we might need extra money. And we are taught that if you are a “good” person, you will be planning ahead all of the time.

What does all of this focused thought on the future actually create in our lives?

For many of us, this is the source of constant stress, worry, fear, and doubt. We worry that something in the future could go wrong. That is a big one!! We stress about income and savings accounts, because we might get caught without money at some point in the future. Also, a very common stress. We are afraid that things will not go according to our plans. We let our thoughts run rampant and create all kinds of terrible possibilities that we then have to work to avoid.

The end result is that we spend so much time THINKING about the future, that we miss the moment we are actually in RIGHT NOW.

Time is the only truly finite resource we have. We will never get more of it, we only have so much. And once it is spent, we do not get it back.

So what would it have looked like for me to be present in the moment yesterday morning? I would have been paying full attention to driving. I would have been watching the road, letting the music that I had on enrich the experience, realizing how lucky I am to have another day. How lucky I am to be driving to a place where I can do my heart work. I would have been enjoying a beautiful moment.

When I look back on that morning, I think about how often this happens to me as a parent- I am distracted. And how my true desire is to be fully present with my family, all the time. It’s not that I will never plan for the future. I go to work, I earn money, I pay the bills. But I will not allow all of my thoughts to go there. Going forward, I choose to spend all the wonderful moments that I have with my family being truly present. Not thinking about what could come next, not worrying about the future, money, changes, moving, etc. I will gracefully let those thoughts go whenever they arise. Instead, I choose to enjoy the moment that I’m in right now.

My little munchie turns one today! In honor of her entry into the world last year, and the day that I became a mother, I’m going to share the story of her birth.

I woke up at 4:30am last June 1st to a contraction. I wasn’t sure if this was the real thing, but after three or four more waves, I got out of bed. I decided that I wanted to be alone for a while, so I let Eric sleep. I headed to the living room to bounce on my birth ball and listen to the Birthing Day Affirmations track. Secretly, I had been so excited just to listen to the “forbidden until you go into labor” recordings from the Hypnobabies program that I had been working with for months. Haha! Well, I was also pretty excited to have a baby too, I suppose!

So I peacefully bounced on the ball for a while, chanting my mantra of “open” over and over. I focused on relaxing into the pain, inviting it instead of trying to escape it. This pain would bring me my child, so it was welcomed. This is what I had been practicing my deep relaxation for. The time was finally here. I would be lying if I said that there wasn’t a part of me that was a little bit nervous about just what I was going to have to face before my baby arrived. But I felt calm at the same time, I really trusted that my body knew how to do this and that everything was going to be fine.

Things began progressing, each wave was getting stronger, so I woke Eric up at 5:30 or so. My midwife, Mary, had reminded me about a million times (with love, of course!) that it was important to eat during labor to keep my strength up. I tried to eat, but it wasn’t happening. We called Mary to give her a heads up that things were moving. She told my husband that it was still early and we could just stay home for a while, but to cometo the birth center  whenever I felt ready. In the meantime, I was pacing the house. Movement really helped me to stay focused, and it just felt good. I kept a hot compress against my low belly while I paced, and I even went and stood in the shower a few times. The water felt amazing, it was such a relief!

At about 7, I tried to eat again. I managed a few bites before the waves were coming so close together that I didn’t have time anymore. I was starting to get worried, because it had only been three hours since the start of labor, and I knew that with this being my first child, it could go on for a very long time. I thought to myself, “If this is early labor, I might really be screwed…” Finally, I told Eric that even though everyone seemed to think we should wait, it was time to go to the birth center. I knew that, if things got any more intense, I would never be able to handle the car ride there. We timed my contractions right before we left, and they were coming 2 minutes apart! I put my headphones on with a Hypnobabies track playing, and we were on our way.

We arrived at the birth center at 8 am. Mary checked me (the only time she did) and started filling the tub right away. She told me I was dilated to an 8 already. Wow! I was really surprised. (Once it was all said and done, she did tell me that I was actually fully dilated when she checked, but she didn’t want to say so. That was actually really perfect, because I was trying so hard to stay focused on the moment and only deal with one wave at a time. It was challenging to do, because my mind wanted to focus on how much time I had left, and hurry things up. Knowing that I was so close to the end would have made that a lot more difficult.) Once I got into the tub, I retreated into my own world. Every bit of focus was on staying calm and breathing through the experience, relaxing into the pain and allowing my body to progress. I was aware that there were people around me, but not in the usual way. It was like everyone was speaking to me through a wall, and while I felt their total support, I also felt alone. Not in a lonely way, but just from the sense of being totally enveloped in an experience that none of them could share. At some point, Eric got into the tub with me so I could lean on him to hold myself up. The feelings in my body started to change, and I just began to push. At first, I was afraid, but I just kept reminding myself to follow what felt right, to stay with the experience. I kept telling myself not to get too excited because it would still be a while before the baby was born. Then Mary told me to reach down, and I felt the baby’s head! Even then, I was still thinking I had a ways to go. The next push, her head was out! She came out with her eyes open. (Very appropriate, now that I know her personality. This girl doesn’t want to miss a thing!) One more push, and Mary was handing me my baby!!!

As I held her on my chest that morning, I can remember thinking “That wasn’t so bad, I could do that again!” Now, after a year of not sleeping, I’m happy to wait a little longer for a second baby… Either way, the last year of my life has been shaped by getting to know this tiny little person, and it has been amazing. She is teaching me so many important lessons, and I am so very happy to be in her life.