Back in the days of yore, I taught the dance option at a high school in Calgary. In my first year, the class was held in the theatre. There was a stereo on wheels that we used for the music. It was handy in that it could be rolled around and it was also not handy because there was no remote control. I had to walk up to the stereo to stop and start the music. (Come to think of it, I could have just asked whoever was closest to turn it on or off, but that wouldn’t have occurred to me in those days… asking for help was not something I knew about.)

So, I put on a lot of miles moving to and fro to do the music. One day, as I approached the stereo to turn it off, it stopped by itself. 

“You guys!” I exclaimed to my grade 11 class. “Did you see that!?! The music turned itself off!”

They nodded but didn’t seem nearly as excited as I was. No matter; I had enough enthusiasm for everyone.  

The next time I walked towards the stereo to...

This past Saturday, my daughter, Zoe, got her black belt in mixed martial arts. It was a gruelling 6-hour test that was a culmination of thousands of hours of training over the past 8 years. 

There were kicks, dive rolls over bamboo (and humans), weapons-work, joint-lock, flips, sparring, jabs, crosses and uppercuts. There was philosophy, endurance, stamina, grace and flexibility. There was also a great deal of stress (especially for me). Of course, there was stress for Zoe too. Hers was prior to the test. Mine was during. 

I’d love to share with you a few things that I learned from the experience. 

Learning #1

Zoe created a kata (a routine of moves that was to represent her learnings over the course of her training). There were advanced components like a back extension (a backwards roll that pushes up into a handstand), an aerial (cartwheel with no hands) and a forward roll into a kip-up (kind of a half-forward roll that she sprung off her shoulders and onto...

When I work with clients, we generally start our sessions by celebrating wins and miracles. Why?

Several reasons actually.

1- What you focus on expands so when you start off with wins and miracles, you’re making yourself more magnetic to more wins and miracles, which just makes good sense.

2- We’re looking for things that have shifted because that’s an indication of growth and expansion on an inner level.

3- When things shift on the inside, they show up in the outer world. The key to this point is that generally, when things shift in the inner world, we attribute the changes to something outside of us, but guess what?!?

When things shift in your outer world, it’s always a direct result of something that’s happened on the inside.

That’s why you’re probably doing better than you thought. 

For instance, last summer, my 14-year-old son, Oakley went from a hard no to doing yoga with me to attending some live classes together, even at 6am!...

Happy End of February! I’m always thrilled about the end of the month because I love the fresh start that’s right around the corner. Hooray for new things!

I had an experience recently that showed me how wonderful it is to ask for help. I thought I would share it with you because maybe you’re under the impression that asking for help is a sign of weakness. 

Or maybe you think that independence is where it’s at.

Or perhaps you believe that it’s more efficient just to do everything yourself. 

(I’ve definitely been there on all three of those misconceptions.)

My lesson on asking for help came in the wonderful package of shopping for jeans. (Up until last week, that phrase would have made me shudder. And my lip curl. And my eye twitch. Quite a visual. I hope you’ve tried it out for yourself.) 

Have you ever experienced challenges whilst buying new jeans? I have. So much so that the last time I bought jeans was approximately 10...

The word love can be pretty charged. Every person has a lifetime of experience behind what the word love means to them. 

In some recent courses that I’ve been taking, love has really opened up for me (and I already thought I had a lot of love) so I wanted to share what’s made a difference in my life. 

For many people, the frame of reference for love is in relationships. You give love, you get love and that’s what we know. 

There’s a bigger love though, that’s completely available to anyone, regardless of how you’ve experienced love in the past. 

It’s actually the love that everything in the universe is made of. The more you can open to and receive this greater kind of love, the more you’ll be able to love yourself and, consequently, others. 

Much of this love can be experienced through nature. It’s valuable to start actively noticing how you feel in the face of some of the following types of experiences....

Happy Valentine’s Day! 

You’re probably receiving 782 Valentines-related messages today and I don’t normally craft my messages around specific days (I’m counter-culture like that) but I thought it would be weird to totally ignore it, so here’s another to add to your virtual pile. 

Seeing as how we’re celebrating love today, I thought it would be beneficial to share one of the ways I’ve built up my self-love over the years.

Although I’ve always seemed to be pretty happy from an outside perspective, for many years my inner world was very different.

There was a whole lot of critiquing going on in my mind. Judging myself was just a way of life. I was oh-so-very-hard on myself. The kicker is that I didn’t even know that I was doing it. There was no awareness and so I was really leading this dual life - happy and positive to others, mean and demanding to myself. It certainly took a lot of energy.

The worlds of personal...

The other day Paul, Oakley and I were out for a walk. I don’t know what it’s like where you live but here we’ve had warm spring-like weather followed by very cold weather, followed by warm weather and so on. What that means for the purpose of this story is that the snow fell, then thawed, then froze, then thawed and so on.

Because Paul was in the lead on this particular walk, we found ourselves bushwacking on an urban trail by the river. (He doesn’t tend to stick to any main routes.) I wasn’t prepared for bushwacking so my shoes didn’t match the very-slippery-semi-melted-somewhat-muddy steep riverbank conditions. 

Both Oakley and Paul had to hold my hands and hoist me up the treacherous path so I didn’t end up seated in puddles or sliding down the hill. Gradually we made our way to the top where there was a wonderfully clear sidewalk.

There was also a woman who must have been in her 70s at the top of the path. She had a dog and a...

Many years ago, I did most things in my life to impress other people. 

I wanted to inspire. 

I wanted to prove that I was amazing.

I wanted to matter.

Those were the days of overdoing pretty much everything. 

• Over-giving
• Over-trying
• Over-committing
• Over-efforting

It there was a way of ‘overing’ something, I did it.

I was very concerned about my image and I spent a great deal of effort and time trying to live up to this gargantuan version of myself that I’d created. Not only live up to it, really, but to exceed it. 

As you can imagine, it was exhausting. And really not sustainable.

I was very externally oriented. I would do anything for acknowledgement and recognition. When I hosted workshops and retreats in those days, I wouldn’t let myself feel successful at the end until I had read the feedback forms. If the comments were positive then - yay! - it must have been a good workshop. 

If there was even one hint of criticism (such as...

One of the most important things to do in January is to choose a theme for the year.

Why?

>It sets the tone for your whole year.

>It gives you clarity.

>It helps bring in more of what you want without having to work so hard for it.

Last year, for me, was The Year of Delight and let me tell you, I got to know delight on so many levels. It showed up every single day multiple times in ways I never would have expected.

One such way resulted in me making this video about an advent calendar I purchased. It was the weirdest advent calendar I’ve ever experienced. Have you ever wondered how weird products come to be? My little video is my imagined brainstorming meeting to create the advent calendar. 

It brought me so much joy and delight to make this vignette partly because I got to play dress up (with wigs!), partly because I got to be on camera (even though I was filming myself) and partly because it was something out of the ordinary. I hope you enjoy it too. (It made...

You might be wondering: how does one get a Christmas injury? I’m still wondering that myself. In a nutshell, I mysteriously hurt my back whilst decorating our tree. I dropped an ornament (which broke), then twisted my spine to pick it up (not in a particularly unusual way) and all of a sudden, a sharp pain shot through my lower back.

Within a few minutes, I couldn’t really walk. I tried to stretch it out, but the pain didn’t pass, so for the rest of the day, I hobbled around. This was 2 days before Christmas, so it’s not like I had nothing to do. 

I did a few things (that I’ll share later) which made it feel significantly better the next day - less hobbling, more walking. However, the second night I woke up to go to the bathroom and tweaked it again so intensely that I couldn’t stand. I sat on the edge of the bed in a full sweat because of the pain (definitely level 10 at this point). 

I crawled to the bathroom at a...