taylor price
Product Placement
pixel skylines
h
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
No title available
titsay
almost home
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Sweet Seals For You, Always
DEAR READER
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Discoholic 🪩
🪼
NASA
Sade Olutola
Misplaced Lens Cap
Stranger Things
Three Goblin Art
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Bulgaria
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from Malaysia
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Poland
@julialeeyoga
if you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.
joseph campbell
feeling small.
I have a recurring dream that I am teaching a yoga class and lose all control. The students begin doing their own sequence and talking amongst themselves and moving in and out of the practice room and I am left standing at the front of the room feeling completely helpless as I watch the scene unfold. No matter how hard I try to maintain my composure and speak more loudly and clearly to try to reign in the chaos, my voice goes unheard. I often wake up from these dreams thinking that I must be the worst yoga teacher in the world. My dream self feels hopelessly small, even though the way I feel when teaching a class is anything but. I have no idea what it means. Sigmund Freud would probably have a field day with this.
I remember graduating from my teacher training program and feeling completely unprepared to be a yoga teacher. Not that the training curriculum wasn't comprehensive enough or that my teachers didn't pass along the knowledge that I needed, but I simply felt that I was not enough. So I attended workshop after workshop and read book after book and avoided actively seeking teaching opportunities (even though I desperately wanted to be a yoga teacher) because no amount of knowledge or information could fill the void that unworthiness left within my soul. Then the opportunity came along to start teaching, and I had to get up in front of a room of people pretending to be big when inside I still felt small. And the smallness, it gradually evolved.
The thing is, we are all called on to do our best in this world. Sometimes we are called before we feel ready. Most of the time, our fear and uncertainty and sense of smallness is less important than the alternative — concealing who we are. Dimming our light. Shying away from our beautiful offerings. But the practice and path of yoga demands us to change. Stepping on the mat provides an opportunity for us to transform our bodies and our minds — to discover strength and flexibility we never knew resided within us, and face our fears and surrender into stillness that we are hardly offered the occasion to appreciate otherwise. Being a student, a true student, is a continuous process. Being a student is a constant reminder that the size we measure ourselves each day will vary. And that is okay.
And being a teacher — well, being a teacher literally cracks me open. Being a teacher requires me to be vulnerable in order to get up in front of a group with any modicum of authenticity, with any ability to teach and share something valuable and make it count. Being a teacher opens me up to criticism, and judgment, and a sense of smallness that feels so profound when I look out at my students and am reminded what an honour and privilege it is to simply hold the torch that lights their paths.
On smallness, Danielle LaPorte (who seems so large one could hardly imagine her ever feeling small) writes: "Small is the size of a seed — wet, and hard, and ready all at once. Small is a violet diamond. Sometimes, small is all you have. The response to feeling small in the face of something big can be an invitation to your purity — your pure, honest truth."
If I'm being honest, there are still so many moments when I feel as if I know nothing at all. I went to a kickboxing class for the first time the other day and felt small. I received an email that made me feel small. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, "I am so fat" — which, ironically, made me feel small.
I observe myself now and think that there is so much more to be done. To be a good student, to be a good teacher. To be a good person, to myself and to others. And at the same time, I see so much right here that I have been waiting for, the real-life manifestation of many whispered hopes and dreams.
Maybe the smallness I dream of is a reflection of the magnificent world out there before me. Maybe the smallness is a reminder of my depths. Maybe the way we see small determines the way we see big. Small is a seed, an opportunity to grow, the starting place for great big things. Moments of smallness come up over, and over, and over again, reminding us of the work that is required to truly live large.
on suffering.
Dang, life sure can be a doozy sometimes. I went to see my acupuncturist earlier this week and when she asked me how I was, I blinked back tears as I told her how I'd been feeling down lately. Sleep has been evading me as I lie in bed worrying about the future and wondering whether or not heaven exists. For days it felt like there was something stuck in my chest that no amount of coughing or throat-clearing would resolve. I felt like I was losing myself, slipping into a sad shell of my former existence that nothing or no one could bring back. Yet there was something comforting about the misery, because it felt strange to be happy when there is so much sadness and suffering in the world. In what universe does it make sense for good people to die for no reason? Who makes the rules? Why bother trying when everything can fall apart at any given moment?
My acupuncturist moved around me deftly, poking at me with needles. She listened and she heard what I was saying. She saw the pain, the confusion, the sorrow beneath it all. Then she told me that this is a time of great wisdom. That even though it may feel as if the ground has been pulled out from underneath me, that this is an opportunity to see things more clearly. And she wasn't saying this all in some divine mystic healer kind of way, but just in a genuine, human-to-human kind of way. And then something shifted within me. No, my mother dying doesn't make sense to me. Maybe it never will. But the goal isn't necessarily to understand it, but to accept it. To stop resisting the current reality and recognize what is happening right now. Do I really want to be sad and miserable forever? Not really. Maybe I'm not at the transformation stage yet — you know, the moment when I will take the heartbreak and pain and use it to make the world AWESOME — but I'm working through it and going through the evolutionary process. And I have faith that I will come out the other end of this journey the better for it.
As difficult and elusive as it may sometimes seem, I've found that meditation has been the antidote to the swirling vortex of emotions within my body and my mind. When I sit, close my eyes, and allow the world to go still and quiet, I can see that stillness reflected within my internal landscape and feel myself moving into a space of ease rather than resistance. I can release my grip on the feelings that connect me to anger, to sadness, to the hurt of loss, and feel myself returning to a state of equilibrium. The more I bring myself back this way, the more I marvel at the stories that we tell ourselves and hold on to and the power these storylines take on. I've also taken to writing myself notes on my forearm, the perfect solution to not being badass enough for a tattoo but to needing a physical reminder to be present. Yesterday the black pen inked on my arm asked, "Are you sure?" I scrubbed at my skin in the shower until it turned pink and the question washed down the drain. The impermanence of it all seemed fitting. Today I wrote, "This is it."
Alan Watts said, "There will always be suffering. But we must not suffer over the suffering." And that's the hardest part — to acknowledge the suffering, to sit with it, and be happy anyway. Because the conditions for happiness exist within us at any given moment: we are alive, we are breathing, we can feel the breeze on our skin and appreciate the feeling of being present. We just have to remember what really matters and what we choose to hold on to.
a 75 minute yoga playlist for a sweet and mellow practice.
on being moved.
I put my practice on hold last year and became frozen in place. Literally. Six months came and went and somehow every day felt exactly the same.
I poured myself into my work and stopped making time for self-care and basically gave up on anything that made me feel good. I'm a "feeling" kind of person — emotions rise up in me like a swell and inform me from the inside-out. Sadness feels like a weight on my chest and anger feels like a fist tightening around my heart. Love is a warm embrace. Fear is icy hands and a punch in the gut. Joy is full-body tingles. When I stopped moving, my whole life stood still, and I felt nothing. I shut off and put myself on autopilot and forgot what it was like to be moved.
Then I finally felt something stir inside of me, a desire to shift out of survival mode and into the territory of living life to the fullest. I wanted to turn the music up and dance. To step on my mat and connect with my breath. To release the grip that fear and sadness had on me and chase after what really makes me happy. To live life in a way that would make my mama so proud.
So I got back on my mat. I let myself be moved.
I opened my journal. I turned the music up and danced wildly. I had coffee with my best friend every day this week and we talked and laughed hysterically. I quit my day job. I walked away from the security of a steady income and stepped fully into the fear of not having enough, being enough, or doing enough. Every morning when I wake up, the day is filled with possibilities. It feels terrifying and thrilling at the same time, like riding a rollercoaster with a head full of helium.
I'd so much rather live from a place of authenticity and deep feeling than never dipping below the surface. I'd much rather let go and let myself be carried along into the future than to hold on so tightly to the past that I never get to see new terrain.
I don't want to shuffle along day after day, never stopping to look around at the beauty and the brilliance that surrounds me. I want to be moved. I want to let my guard down and connect with people and believe that anything and everything is possible. I want to write and create and be a part of something bigger than myself. I want to read books that make me think and watch movies that make me cry. I want to soak up this whole wide world and let me break me open only to fill me up with something even better.
All of a sudden it makes sense to me, why practicing yoga feels so good, like coming home. Because that's what life is all about, isn't it? Letting yourself be moved.
2015.
2014 was a difficult year for me. I lost my mom and I stopped practicing and writing and worked too hard and worried too much about the future and wondered why it felt like I was drifting farther and farther away from myself. It was heartbreaking and unexpected and challenging in so many ways, and there were many moments where I didn’t think I could make it through it all, yet here I sit. I spent new year’s eve alone at home recovering from food poisoning and suffering from insomnia and wanted to laugh because it seemed like such an apt way to wrap up the year. But at least I was able to find the humour in it, so there’s that.
Looking back, I never once imagined that I would be where I am today. That’s the hard part — the fact that your whole life can literally change in an instant, and everything can be sent veering off course by something so completely out of your control. Our minds like to make sense of things, and there are some things that just can’t be explained, leaving us helplessly confused and searching for answers.
Through it all, what I’ve learned is that all we ever have is the present moment. It slips through our fingers again, and again, and again, but sometimes we can catch a hold of the pure and blissful experience of being truly present in a conversation, or making a connection with someone new, or simply just sitting sweetly and quietly with our selves. We experience happiness in the spontaneous dance parties, the fits of belly-aching laughter, the simple feeling of falling asleep beside someone we love, and then we lose it in the quest for the next big thing.
Arianna Huffington puts it beautifully when she says: “We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, or trophies, or experiences, or even to avoid failures, but to be whittled and sandpapered down until what’s left is who we truly are.” What matters isn’t what we have or what we’ve done, but who we are and what we can offer even when it seems like there is nothing left to give. We are what is left after our money and possessions and reputations are stripped away, when we are raw and vulnerable — how we respond in those moments of discomfort and uncertainty is what makes us human.
I want to be a spreader of magic. I want to be a reminder that there is good in the world. I want to love hard even if it hurts. I want to make people smile. I want to make a practice of appreciating all the small, ordinary moments, like waking up to see the sun streaming through the blinds, and feeling snowflakes land on my eyelashes, and breathing in the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I want to laugh and laugh until my eyes crinkle up. I want to live fully and completely and treasure what is gained rather than fixate on what has been lost.
In saying goodbye to my mama, I’ve realized who my true friends are (you know who you are — thank you, I love you, thank you, I love you). In leaving one job, I believe I have opened the door for something better. In losing sight of what makes me happy, I hope that I can rediscover an even greater sense of joy and wonder. And even though everything still feels broken, there is still a reason to smile and be happy every day. For that I am grateful.
Although nothing is certain and everything can change, there’s a sense of magic in the possibility we create simply by appreciating things as they are. So to this past year — thank you for leading me here. To this moment — thank you for existing. To tomorrow, and the next day, and the next — may you bring an abundance of possibilities.
believe there is good in the world.
life lately.
The general consensus seems to be that it takes at least a year to grieve. Time goes by so quickly — it's already been a month since my mother passed away. One month down, 11 more to go.
Life lately has been back to normal, for the most part. I'm back to work and back to teaching and am generally functioning as well as a human being should, save for the mom-sized hole in my heart. In the days and weeks following my mother's death, my body felt stiff and achy and totally unyielding, and practice was the farthest thing from my mind, but these days I'm starting to move more and challenge my limits and remind myself how strong and open I can be.
I wish I had some answers, some sense of how to navigate this situation, and the platitudes of "She's in a better place" and "Everything happens for a reason" just don't cut it. To be honest, sometimes the emptiness feels so vast that it makes my heart physically ache, and sometimes I feel so happy, so grateful, so privileged to be my mother's daughter. So far all I can do is sit with the pain when it comes and just let the hot tears course down my face. Not to say that everything is all gloom and doom — in fact, I've been so wonderfully surprised by how much people care and will show up for you when you need them, and how resilient that we as humans can be.
It's funny how the experience of death takes you through the entire spectrum of what it means to be alive: from the depths of sadness and despair to joy and celebration and guilt and anger and everything in between. Life is so beautiful and so fragile, and often we lose sight of what really matters in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes we need to be steered back to the right path. Sometimes we need to be shaken to our senses. Indeed, hard times don't just change us; they reveal who we are.
When I was young, I asked my mom where babies come from. She told me that when two people love each other very, very much, they bring a baby into the world. I remember thinking to myself that I never wanted to love somebody because I was afraid of making a baby. Aside from daintily side-stepping the challenging task of explaining the intricacies of copulation and reproduction to a five-year-old, what my mother taught me was that of great love, we bring forward beautiful things. I know now that without a doubt, above all else, to love and be loved is the greatest privilege.
Life lately has been back to normal, for the most part, but still difficult. Life lately has been infused with love and gratitude and heartbreak and sorrow and a pair of new shoes (retail therapy) and lots of chocolate (chocolate therapy). I'm trying to stay human and stay present for it all, whether that means laughing hysterically or sobbing into my pillow. Sending out so much love to everyone who needs it today, because we're all in this together.
true yoga is not about the shape of your body, but the shape of your life. yoga is not to be performed, yoga is to be lived. yoga doesn't care about what you have been, yoga cares about the person you are becoming. yoga is designed for a vast and profound purpose and for it to be truly called yoga, its essence must be embodied.
aadil palkhivala
blessed, brokenhearted, and somewhere in between.
There it was, written in blue ballpoint ink on my bucket list: Practice yoga in beautiful Bali. Then it happened — I co-led my first yoga retreat in Bali and literally spent two weeks living the dream surrounded by an incredible group of women. Charged with the magic of Ubud, we learned how to laugh, love and let go, and I felt so lucky and so happy that when I walked into a jewelry store on Hanoman road and saw a necklace with the word “Blessed” in Sanskrit, I knew I had to have it.
Then as soon as my plane landed I received a phone call from my sister telling me my parents were in the hospital and my heart sank. After travelling for 30 hours, when all I wanted was a hot shower and a soft bed, I went straight from the airport to the emergency room to see my mama — my beautiful, healthy mama — comatose and on a ventilator. No amount of yoga, pranayama or meditation could have ever prepared me for this moment, one that was so sudden and so shocking that it seemed to defy all logic. My heart broke into a million pieces, seeing my mother in that condition and watching my father break down before my eyes.
The next week was a blur of driving back and forth from the hospital, talking to doctors and nurses, crying, trying to convince my dad to eat something, and frantically researching my mother’s prognosis, which the doctor could only suggest was not good. On the fifth day, I got a call from the hospital. My mother’s blood pressure was dropping fast, and we should get there soon. I ran to the car and drove to the hospital with shaking hands and eyes filled with tears, where I held my mom’s hand until her heart stopped beating, still wearing that stupid necklace in some cruel twist of fate.
I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined that I would come back from Bali and never be able to see or speak to my mother again. There was so much I wanted to tell her, and I miss her all the time. I miss her cooking. I miss her bright, sparkly laugh. I miss picking up the phone and calling her to talk about my mundane life. Sometimes my mind runs away from me with “Should haves” and “What ifs”, even though I know that kind of thinking won’t change anything.
Last week, the kitchen was filled with sympathy bouquets, and the sweet floral aroma was almost sickening. Now, all the flowers are beginning to die, serving as a reminder that life just continues to go on, and that death is a natural part of the process of living.
Slowly, I’m starting to pick up the pieces. I start teaching again next week, and as much as I’m looking forward to being back in the studio again, I hope I can keep myself together. I still wear my necklace every day, and try to remind myself of all I have to be grateful for.
I feel grateful to know without a doubt that I made my mama proud and that she led a good, honest life. I know that I am like my mother in so many ways, and I hope to emulate her warmth, her kindness, her unconditional love. I feel grateful to have a support system of people who care about me. I feel grateful to have known the depth of a mother’s love. We are all blessed in so many ways, small and large, and despite the hardships that come our way, to be able to live and make our mark on the world is still an honour and a privilege.
So here I am, somewhere in between blessed and brokenhearted. Blessed to be my mother’s daughter, brokenhearted to have lost her so soon. Humbled and devastated by the chaos of the universe. Finding the balance in between.
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot
choice.
I've been struggling lately. With small things like grappling between staying home where it's warm and cozy or bundling up and going to the studio to practice, and with bigger issues pertaining to what the meaning of life is and what I have to offer the world and so on and so forth. I feel like I'm teetering on the precipice of change, and I have to plunge forward in one direction or another, but right now taking even the smallest step just feels so hard.
There are days when it seems like there's nothing left to do but weep at the state of the world, at the way we treat one another, at the fact that we can take the most important things for granted. There are lots of moments when I wonder 'Why bother?', when I feel like I'm putting out so much more than I'm getting back, or when I literally have no idea what my next move should be when life seems to be making perfect sense for everybody else. I know I'm not alone in this, that there are times when things just feel more difficult than usual, that it is part of the human experience.
I was out for dinner last night and happened to overhear the conversation at the table behind me, where a man was listing, in excruciating detail, everything that was wrong with his job. And as much as a small part of me wanted to lean in and commiserate, the better part of me (the part that knows better) just wanted to give the guy a hug and ask him what he could do to improve his situation.
Because the better part of me knows that we get to choose the good we put into the world, even if it's just an extra dollar in the tip jar or a heartfelt note of appreciation. A change in outlook. An unsaid apology released. A listening ear. But the fact that every moment is a choice can also make every moment a struggle. Sometimes being kind can feel more difficult than being spiteful. Sometimes letting go is so much harder than holding on, and our ability to press onward can shrink under the pressure of giving up. The beautiful and difficult part is, we get to choose.
So, today, my choice is to share the struggle. To simply sit and breathe for a while and feel where the struggle arises. To get on the mat and invite my practice to crack me open and let the struggle pass through. To cling to threads of hope and happiness with blind faith that everything will work out. My choice is to eat tiramisu for lunch and sit down and write an honest blog post and tell my sister I love her. My choice is to keep trying to put more good out there, because that's what I have to offer. And somehow, within the context of choice, things start to make just a little bit more sense.
the journey has to feel the way you want the destination to feel. let me offer this again, in reverence to your life force: the journey has to feel the way you want the destination to feel. and again, with respect to your potential: the journey has to feel the way you want the destination to feel.
danielle laporte
find your drishti.
honoured to teach and practice alongside such gorgeous, talented yogis in a beautiful studio!
dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.
henry david thoreau
discovery.
My practice has shifted and changed a lot over the course of my foray into yoga, and consequently, so has my teaching. It's been interesting to experience the personal evolution from practicing and teaching yoga as a means to an end to simply acknowledging the power of stepping on the mat and coming from a place of curiosity rather than a place of goal-oriented ambition.
In the spirit of clarity, I've been thinking a lot about what I want to offer as a teacher, and what it means for me to embody that role. The class that I taught this morning was centred around the theme of creating more room for discovery, and I think that lately, it's this idea that compels me to get up in front of a room and teach from the heart. To explore the "Why nots" and the "What ifs" and the "Maybes" through breath and movement. To design a practice that makes everything feel more possible. To find space and connection in our bodies, hearts and minds is what yoga inspires us to do, and as a teacher, my intent is to be a vessel for that truth.
The more that I get clear about my vision and my mission, the more that I dig in and do the work of self-discovery, the more comments I get about how "that class was exactly what I needed today", or "That was just the right energy", or "Your sequence was perfectly paced". I love that. The more that we tune in to our intention behind what it is we are putting out into the world, the more that we can manifest our ideal reality — literally. Authentic teachers attract the students who want them, who understand their language and who resonate with their values. I like to think there's a teacher for every student and a student for every teacher, and there's an energetic shift when we interact with those who understand and uplift us.
Being a teacher is about so much more than putting together a playlist and coming up with a sequence. It's about doing the work of figuring out and owning that special gift that we each have to offer. It's about developing and honing the capacity to truly see people — beyond judgments and limitations, to witness not only the ability that exists, but also the potential for growth. It's about learning to love the student and the practice, and being able to serve each student where they are, to meet them there and offer a practice fuelled by discovery.
travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.
yogi bhajan