yoga - grace grits and gardening

Sunday Letter: 02.05.23

February 5, 2023 By Talya Tate Boerner

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Dear Sunday Letter friends,

We survived the snowy, icy end to January, so yay for that. Now, February is here, the groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter, and a Chinese balloon has been spying on us, just blatantly gliding along witnessing our craziness up close and personal. The balloon is no more, but I guess any way you slice it, February is starting out a bit dicey.

BUT over here at my house, I’m trying to focus on the good. In fact, some of my friends and I have decided 2023 is the year we will celebrate the small things. And I think you should join us!

Don’t we often let small accomplishments pass by without truly acknowledging them, because, well, they are small things? No big deal. Simply pieces of the larger puzzle.

Those pieces are essential. Big wins are made up of small wins; without the pieces, the whole is never achieved.

Look at me being so philosophical…Continue Reading

Use it or Lose it. Ohm….

April 23, 2014 By Talya Tate Boerner

Use it or lose it. That’s how the saying goes, right? Well I’m here to tell you, IT’S TRUE. For me, anyway.

Lately, I’ve been lax with yoga classes. Oh sure, I wear my yoga pants all over the house and through the neighborhood. This week I even wore them to…wait for it…

yoga!

In fact, I went to yoga two-days-in-a-row, three if I go today, but since I probably won’t, I’ll leave it at two. It’s not that I don’t love yoga, because I do. I’ve let travel and writing interrupt my routine, and I hate that.

I’ve lost core strength, and I really hate that.

Yoga works areas of the body and mind not used with other forms of exercises. So any minute now I expect my brain to slip-slide away along with my ability to do an average plank.

During day one of my two-days-in-a-row, I discovered core strength was not the only thing I’d lost during my lackadaisical period. My mat had disappeared from the corner where it had no doubt begun to collect dust. (Students leave their mats instead of dragging them to and from class…)

I checked with the instructor who helped me search everywhere. Maybe it vaporized from lack of use.

I’m gonna miss my cool Lululemon mat. We’d been in a lot of surprising places together.

I hope she will turn up, but I realize that’s what I get for being such a slacker.

Lululemon

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

The Slackers: Close My Eyes

Seven Shades of Yoga

September 4, 2013 By Talya Tate Boerner

morgueFile Kakisky

Within seven seconds, I chose yoga over Facebook. I hadn’t been to yoga in weeks and was spending way too much time with the other. But I’d been busy. Writing, I’m alway writing. And last month I had strep throat that lingered. Plus we just returned from vacation.

Yada, yada.

Excuses, excuses.

Seven minutes later, I was out the door and into the humid morning wearing my favorite yoga pants that somehow seemed smaller.

After a seven minute drive, I signed my name on the clipboard. “Don’t worry if I spend the whole class in child’s pose—just ignore me, I’m rusty.” I explained to Michelle who teaches Explore the Body. I needed to explore my body. We had become strangers as of late.

Michelle laughed and promised to call an ambulance if I stopped breathing altogether. She’s nice that way.

I sorted through at least seven yoga mats to uncover mine, dusty and abandoned, propped in the corner where I left it in July.

Seven minutes into shoulder stretches, I felt the squeeze of a Charley Horse building through my arm. I adjusted. Charley eventually released his vise-grip hold on my invisible bicep, but not until I reverted to steady pre-labor breathing exercises.

Seven minutes later, I floundered into and out of Thread the Needle Zen Pose. But I did it. Sort of.

Seven more poses, and my shoulders loosened, my mind cleared, the nerve endings in my body tingled.

Seven cleansing breaths into Uttanasana, I could bend near enough to the ground to notice my shabby toe polish.

Seven shades into final Shivasana, I remembered why I love yoga.

Namaste.

talya