The key to surviving the holidays (7th Series)

When you are the only one in your family practicing yoga, things can kind of get a little tricky around the holiday season. The thing about seventh series is it requires a different sort of flexibility than your traditional primary series.

Seventh series is the most complicated series. Let me let me try to explain why. So at first it was just me and the yoga mat. That's it. That's my entire world of practice. I just practice. I don’t answer to anyone or have to figure out anyone else’s schedule. But then I got married and so then it's two schedules to figure out when I can practice. This isn’t really complicated since we are two adults who entered into this relationship thing with a level of respect, and hopefully A LOT of love. However, (because of the love) I become a dad, and so this ‘normal routine’ went out the window. A new normal is created and between bottle feedings, naps, and daycare ‘something’ that looks like a yoga practice begins to take shape.

However, introduce holidays, and suddenly I become a brother. I become an uncle, and also I'm a son. And this becomes my very complicated seventh series practice. Depending on your circumstances your’s can get even more complicated. And those hours of practice become precious minutes to find some stillness, some twists, and some flexibility.

But flexible doesn't just mean in terms of physical flexibility, because with all of the work that I've done to myself over the past six months, the past year, the past 15 years of practicing, no matter how much I think I've changed, my parents still see me as this guy right here.

And so no matter how much I want to tell them, I've changed. That I'm not that three year old kid anymore. It’s pointless.

The catch is, instead of trying to convince them that I'm different, I need to respect the fact that they themselves are different. That it wasn't just me who was changing for these past six months. My sister, she was also changing over the past six months, and she's different than the sister that I grew up with who was four years younger than me. And my wife, who I love and I'm with every day. She has been working on herself for these past six months and she's different. And our mom who had a heart attack and and and changed her life completely and now she's doing her first 5K.

When I can respect that they've changed and accept them for being somebody different, that's the twists and turns that make all of this practice really fantastic.