1. Free personal trainers :)

My favorite yoga student < Dawn > is currently about 8 weeks from getting her certification in fitness training and nutrition and she needs people to train. I'm one of those people!!!YAY! So grateful and I need this really bad.   I've been going to the gym for two years...I eat healthy and cannot lose a pound. HELP ME. I have high hopes Dawn. Thank you :))

2. Belly dancing. Loving this class. I'm going to continue taking it whenever it is offered. I like the teacher and the other students are fun! It's a great workout too.

3. "The Diamond in your Pocket" the book I'm reading by Gangaji. Here are a few parts I've highlighted so far.

*Every thing is subject to change. All objects, thoughts, feelings, states of mind, health and governments. Every circumstance changes. pg.64

*As long as we settle for the superficial truths, we tragically miss the deeper revelation. pg.66

*Language is an incredible power of the mind. But if we look at it carefully, we see that it is still in the very primitive stages of development. Everyone can recognize this, just from the experience of trying to communicate with someone else. You know what you said, but they think you said something else. pg.93

*When you meet suffering head-on, you make the exquisite, paradoxical discovery that suffering holds the very jewel that was sought in the attempt to escape it. pg. 159

*I invite you for just this moment to stop searching for relief from suffering. The invitation is neither to become oblivious to suffering, nor to give up in despair. It is an invitation to stop searching for something to rescue you from yourself. pg.167

*To be supported, you have to choose to receive the support fully and completely. pg.169

*What a strange creature fear is. It exists only when there is resistance to it's existence! pg.175

*Spiritual maturity has little to do with how people usually conceive it. It is not related to the years you have devoted to spiritual practice, or the number of years you have prayed, gone to church or been good. pg.177

4. Both of my children are enrolled in college and will begin classes in Jan. I by NO MEANS believe that you must have a college education to succeed in life ..as our society would have us believe..but I am a fan of continued education.   

5. Discussing life with my husband.

6. Asking tough questions.

7. It's November!! I'm madly in love with the month of November. One of my favorite months for sure!

8. Surrender: You are either in a state of surrender or in a state of war.

Surrender to your current life circumstances humbly and gracefully.  What does this mean, exactly?It means stopping the struggle.  Giving up the fight.  Awakening to the realization that the more you fight something, the stronger and more pervasive it will become in your life.  Fighting is not the way to peace - surrender is.

When you read the word "surrender," you probably relate it to "defeat" but the two are entirely different.  Defeat means you've lost the battle; it denotes weakness.  Surrender means you've chosen not to fight and struggle anymore, and this decision comes from a place of POWER. 

Ah, winter in Huron County. For the snowmobilers and skiers, this is paradise. But why do the rest of us suffer so? Why do so many of us count the weeks till spring? Why are we dying to trade in our shovel for the lawn mower? Why can’t we make the most of our winter wonderland?

The biggest problem is that as a species, we human beings don’t like to roll with the seasons. Regardless of what season it is, we want to maintain the same routine, the same levels of productivity, and the same life. And a lot of this comes from the shift to living in town from living on the farm.

When we lived on the farm, our lives naturally shifted with the seasons. In the spring, we tilled and sowed the land. In the summer we harvested hay and watched our crops grow. In the fall, we harvested the crops for winter. And then, when winter came and the snow fell, we rested along with the land.

But when we work in offices and businesses, we expect the same level of productivity all year long regardless of what month it is. As far as the business is concerned, the month of the year is irrelevant (unless of course you’re in retail). There is no downtime.

Then we take this mentality home with us. Regardless of what month it is, Sarah has to get to piano lessons, and Charlie has to get to hockey. There are meetings to go to, events to attend, and so on and so on. We lead busy lives regardless of the season – and sometimes we’re even busier in the winter!

We honour no cycle of the seasons. There is no winter downtime for us. There is no rest and regeneration time. It is simply go-go-go.

But in effect, this isn’t reasonable. We are just carbon-based life forms on this planet like the bears, the birds, and the soil that rests all winter. We are connected to the same yearly cycle. We are not separate from it.

Having these great big brains makes us think that we run according to a different set of rules. But it isn’t true. We are connected to our environment whether we like it or not.

If you close your eyes, you can feel the difference in the seasons. You can imagine what spring FEELS like. You can feel the newness, the freshness – you can almost FEEL the greenness of the grass. Then imagine what summer FEELS like. It feels different. It is dryer, hotter, “yellower”. We know it right “down to our bones”. And when we then imagine what fall or winter feels like, it feels different again.

When our schedules and ideals keep us hopping regardless of the season, we end up working against our own bodies. We end up with an inner struggle between the expectations that we’ve set up for ourselves and the body’s natural tendency to attempt to adjust to the seasons. We end up exhausted, sick, depressed, and just generally feeling blah.

So what can we do about it? How can we adjust to the seasons? How do we synchronize our bodies and minds with wintertime? The great thing is that we instinctively already know how.

This is the time of year when we want to curl up in a blanket and read. We want to go to bed earlier. We want to eat thick soups and hearty foods that stick to our ribs. But overall, we just want to slow down – we want to rest and recuperate. Deep down, we know that we need some down-time – time to repair from the last season and time to build up our stores to get ready for the next.

Maybe it’s taking time for a bath. Maybe it’s cutting out a couple of extra-curricular activities (but not my yoga classes!). Maybe it’s simply allowing ourselves to go to bed half an hour earlier – or even an hour earlier with a nice book.

This is a time to just let the mind and body rest – just like the ground underneath all that snow. The soil isn’t stressing about the snow. It’s just using the snow as an insulating blanket while it rests and gets ready for spring.

Hmm… Enjoying winter’s insulating blanket of snow to rest as we relax, recuperate, and get ready for spring… Hmm…

Sounds good to me.

Katrina,

www.katrinabos.ca.