why do we love to travel?

we love travel because we feel free, we fully experience new and crazy things, and then we feel a l i v e !

we may ask ourselves this question, 'why do i love to travel again?' when our train is 2 hours late, and it's 95 degrees and humid, flies are swarming around your eyelashes and your mouth, and you're sweating and smelly even though you showered a few hours before...

trying new things pushes us to "uncomfortable" experiences...but this discomfort is very much a part of that feeling of aliveness. we crave discomfort because we learn from it, we grow. i sometimes refer to this aliveness as "taking a bite out of life".

the question becomes, how do we "take a bite out of life" when we return back to our g-calendar, our cell phone, our rent payment...? how do we squeeze out that yummy yoga feeling from each class after we've taken a few dozen or maybe a few hundred classes? let's be honest: the first 5-10 yoga classes felt so magical, and now it still feels amazing but not mind-blowing each time. how do we take that bliss away each and every time?

it's up to us. push ourselves. not necessarily at all to levels of physical discomfort - but keep a sharp eye on the mind: focus on something! focus on the breath! we have energy channels running through our body - when do we ever stop to try to feel them? feel the space around your body, feel the energy that your'e emitting, take a moment to cognize the energy that your'e taking in - there is always a deeper level of your practice available to you. i might not be able to see where your mind has gone like i can see that your hip is out of alignment in trikonasana - it is up to you as a practitioner, as a yogi, to take the mind with you throughout your practice. find something new, find a new level, feel a different part of the body - anything to bring your awareness into the here and now...and see how juicy and blissy you can make your practice once more.

the newness is a state of mind.

we begin with the breath.