Connect - Word of the year 2019

Three quarters of the year 2019 are almost behind us and it seems like a little late to be introducing ‘Connect’ my word of the year. But as they say, better late than never.

Besides, there are things happening in my life and provoking thoughts as a direct consequence of choosing this word that it seems like a good time to talk about it. And perhaps, I have a perspective to share now that might have been very different at the beginning of the year.

A bit of a general thought, I’ve been choosing Word of the year since 2007 and even if I decide that I won’t choose a “word of the year”, I invariably do. At the very least, it sets an intention for the year, makes you aware of your thoughts, brings perspective to the abundance or lack of the word (intention) in your own world (quite a mouthful there).

And for a believer like me, I think more than just bringing my awareness to situations, the universe creates and attracts circumstances and draws me closer to what I truly need with the intentions I set for the year.

My intention for setting this intention was to build a community, feel like I belong and feel more connected to fellow humans that I share this journey with. Mostly the horizontal connections… I took a few initiatives to feel more connected; I reached out to people with similar interests, I went on more walks and more coffee dates. There were a couple initiatives that I shared/ started on social media, both of them related to my fondness for the six-yard unstitched fabric – the saree. I organized local meet ups for women who love to wear sarees.

And I started an Instagram group for building sisterhood around a traveling saree very much based on the movie ‘The sisterhood of the traveling pants saree’.

Here’s what I wrote on my Instagram post:   

Have you seen the movie- the sisterhood of the traveling pants... it’s about teen girls finding comfort and support in their friendships. I was watching the movie and realized that the craving for sisterhood and support and the longing to belong that the teens in the movie were seeking exists even when we get older.

With that intention, I decided to share my saree and sisterhood strength with Ramya and all others who’d like to join the sisterhood. #sisterhoodofthetravelingsaree

The intention of the sisterhood is that the collective feminine power will bring us what we desire and most need at this juncture in life.

Please let me know if you’d like to join and follow the tag to see who is contributing to the sisterhood before you. If my saree is taking it too long to reach you please reach out to others who might want to become your support system and start another #sisterhoodofthetravelingsaree in your community, in your family, among your friends (real or virtual). If you don’t wear saree, share a t-shirt, a dupatta, a bracelet whatever binds you into sisterhood.

And talking about sisterhood, why leave the men out they probably need the support of the feminine energy the most and an avenue to express their solidarity.

Whatever it takes, sisterhood, brotherhood, a saree or a bracelet or just a prayer, please reach out, support and be supported in turn, now is the time... Please tag #sisterhoodofthetravelingsaree so we can follow you and see how you are bonding and how your common intentions are bringing us all together.

Like I've said before, I set intentions, but I don’t get to determine the path, often universe sends me what I need at the moment and although my word ‘Connect’ was for my horizontal connections, strengthening vertical connection was part of the divine plan.

I was thinking about doing a 100-day project, but I wasn’t sure if the time was right to commit to something too time-consuming since my plate was full and was going to get worse in May and June. The 100 Day project kicks off in early April.
So, I kept it simple and my target was, one month of self-care through at least 5 minutes of daily meditation. I was easily able to manage that, and I continued it for May and most of June as well. Most days my meditation sessions were more than 10 minutes but there were days when I needed to squeeze in my meditation in the car at a parking lot while waiting for kids at their activities. I managed a 90+ day track record but then travel schedules upset it and I didn’t quite make it to the 100^th day, not a very good track record there.

I came back from vacation and slowly settled into a routine and I was missing meditation, and this time I knew that I wanted something deeper, something more guided to continue on this journey. I joined a local group for just that purpose, my vertical connection and my inward journey and guess what, found a bunch of people on that exact same journey and a community formed around our practice. I’ll talk more about the program once I’m a little more experienced with it but needless to say, the word ‘Connect’ is leading me on journeys that I didn’t plan for. And as soon as I think I have figured it out, it changes again, just like life itself.

So, the journey continues- inward, outward, vertical, horizontal and sometimes it sits still within me and those are the most precious of moments.

And as I mentioned in the beginning about sharing about my word in the 9^th month of the year gives me a unique perspective that I didn’t have at the beginning of the year, well, looking back at my list I realized that I had chosen this word – ‘connect’ for 2014 as well and had I written about it at the beginning of the year, I would have been very tempted to change it but I’m glad I didn’t and even though the word is a repeat the journey is as different as day and night.

Yam + Niyam and Yog…

December, last month of the year… time to look back and reflect on the year that's coming to an end, a mile marker to take an account of all that we braved and accomplished this year. My word for this year was 'Forged' and I did forge ahead in many aspects of my life.
Biggest one being the challenge to take a sabbatical from my day-job as a bridge design engineer and try living in California, going back to school and being a stay at home mom.
It has been an interesting journey this last few months and has given me a lot of time for self reflection and it was interesting that as I was faced with new challenges, I dug deeper into my roots to find my strength.

Earth Day - 22nd April

Earth Day was perfectly earth friendly for us. We started out with a family yoga workshop which was an excellent introduction to yoga for kids. My older one has done some yoga but it was the very first time for the younger one to learn the names of the poses, usually she tries to just copy what I am doing. 

The yoga was more fun based and less posture based and that bothered me a little bit because it’s very easy to injure muscles/ligaments with wrong twists and turns but it was okay for kids because they are usually more flexible and they listen to their body much better than their adult counterparts. We did many tree poses to ground and balance ourselves, perfect for Earth Day.

They took a couple of pictures on Polaroid that went straight in my Project Life Album for the weeks entry.  

After the class we did some finger painting and made a tree and also twisted some pipe cleaners around dum-dum pops to turn them into little people in tree pose.

Now, my girlies want to go to the studio each time I pick up my yoga mat.

After we came back home, DH and I turned our attention to our yard. We pulled out weeds and cleared up circles around the tree. I planted some onions and spinach in the small veggie patch. I plan to re-do my veggie patch this summer so I am hesitant to plant all my veggies even though the weather has been gorgeous. I planted some tomatoes and strawberries in containers. The rhubarb and mint is already lush green and I cannot wait to start using them in my culinary experiments.

The other task that we finished was also very appropriate for Earth Day. I’ll share the details in a later post but we finished making a Play kitchen out of an old book shelf for the girls. It is hard to convince my girls to leave the kids play area in IKEA cause they love to play with the kitchen but now that they have one of their own, I hope it’s going to be easier.

Yoga studio...

A couple of weeks ago DH bought me a membership at the local yoga studio and just one class into it and I realized how much I was missing yoga. My regular yoga practice has dropped down to about once a week and after that when I sank my shoulder blades into a downward facing dog two days in a row; it reminded me how rare my upper body routine has been for past few months.

Last year when I encountered IT band pain due to lack of stretching and sporadic but longer runs, I joined Bikram Yoga classes for a few weeks. It is yoga practiced in hot (105F) and humid room to stimulate the weather condition of west Bengal India where the founder of Bikram yoga belongs too. The heat helps open up the joints and sweat releases impurities and those classes helped me relax my hip joint, outer thigh muscles.

Fast forward to now, I am back at following the routine, at least 4 times week and it does get challenging with a full time job that leaves only evenings for taking group classes but so far I managed fine. My current yoga studio offers ‘Hot yoga’ similar to above mentioned and it is best detox anyone can wish for. The poses are a gentle series of 26; and focus a lot on building the core and rediscovering the balance, something all of us can use in a rushed fast paced modern lifestyle.
With the frequent visits to the yoga studio and trying to up my running mileage, I have figured that ‘pigeon pose’ is the best to open up the hip joint and to find the much needed relaxation for the IT band pain. There is a certain excitement in the contradiction that lets you passively sink into a pose and allows the body to dictate the severity of the workout. After the lingering stretch, there is a meditative quality to feeling the sensation of muscles rather than jerking it back to the active lifestyle.
I am enjoying both styles of yoga, the series of active poses and also the passively pleasure of sinking into that pose rather than forcing it; mostly based on the day I had that led to the class. Something that my yoga teacher said that stuck with me was that, ‘body is part of nature and it will follow its own course, just like you can’t force the petals of a bud to rush it into bloom you can push your body without jeopardizing its wellbeing’.
That said I love my Barre body classes as well. It pushes you to hold small muscle groups that you didn’t know existed into active poses which gives fast results. After the first few classes, I swear if I had just followed the fatigue lines and drew over them, I could have developed my own personal muscle diagram.
I haven’t lost any weight in these last two weeks but I can feel that I am walking taller and the pants are fitting better….

If it works, stick with it...

We often take things for granted, if its mine its bound to be ordinary, it was only special till it was beyond my reach. And when we loose those same ordinary things that we depended on so much, we miss them terribly. As you'll read towards the end of the post the thought that started this series of thinking was also very ordinary run of the mill but because it provoked so much more within the grey cells may be it was more than that...

As we first step out of the house, for pre-school/ kindergarten, our parents and then teachers and then the society teaches us to work in the group, adjust with others, don't boast your own self, be considerate. I was one of those kids that took a long time to adjust to the fact that once I left my parents home, I was not a princess anymore. I was bossy and imposing and although I have tempered a bit, I haven't changed much. So, I assume, all kids must go through this phase where they realize that they are not special anymore, the best student of the class, he/she is the best and we should all try to be like him/her because of course, he/she gets good grades, awards, praises, everything.
Then we take our focus away from that best person because it too tough to be the best and remain there, so we form peer groups among other similarly emotionally inclined creature who also happen to be in the same dilemma of the impending adolescent. The effect, the pressure, the image we identify with continues to grow with the confusion and the peers that often surround us. Pretty soon, the fog lifts and we find ourselves amidst responsibilities and having to fetch our own path, our own ideal; something that we forgot to create because there was nothing special in us, it was always that other smarter kid that we followed and looked up to.
So we continue looking for that smarter kid to follow; and in the modern times more often than not its a media personality or icon. Hair like that, body like this, home like that, car like this...

We keep looking for that perfect image that we can follow, and in our exhaustion and confusion the life continues, like a blur, a self inflicted fog which we are afraid to lift because we might discover ourself. And we are not the prince/princess anymore, we are that other person who is left out and is not perfect. A compliment from someone else seem like a sly joke, well because I am a nobody, till of course the advertisement on the back of the magazine tells me that 'I am worth it'.

Wouldn't it be so wonderful if we weren't told to curb our personality and were given the opportunity to explore and discover ourself. My parents love me because of who I am and not because I am a size 2 and look good in a bikini. My parents don't love the engineer in me, the cook, the perfect house-keeper, they just love me and have loved me long before I became any of that, who I identify myself as.
So, there is a connection somewhere that is severed. Growing up the mind got the signals to be and to follow that perfection that is never achieved. And now its media, magazines, newspapers all telling me how should I look, what should be the length of my skirt and the thickness of the heels of my shoes and the color of the walls of my bedroom.
Where is my consent, my priority, what do I like, what makes me happy? Do I even know the line where my happiness is because I am complying and others approve of it ends and my personal freedom starts. Do we ever sit long enough to truly understand our own happiness?

I have been thinking a lot about how media influences me and I am trying to stay away from popular culture, sensational news that I have no control over, just for the sanity of my mind. But I find the same things everywhere, fashion magazine, catalogs, home decor, they all are trying to mold me into something that they perceive as perfection. And who are they, followers of a few who failed to conform to the rules of the society to begin with. Who perhaps are a little less convoluted in there minds about their own identity. There must be some who feel good in there own skin and can embrace their own uniqueness.

The quote from Marianne Williamson in the movie 'Akeela and the Bee
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. 


Hence, my topic for the post, we all discover little things in our life that work for us but because we have it, we tend to discount it and negate it and often loose it; only to realize how well it worked for us, with us. I rediscovered yoga after about 6-7 months. I had misplaced the yoga DVD during the move and never missed it, that is, till all my experiments to stay fit were lost on me and I did need to go back to something tried and tested. It took an hour to look for my DVDs and now I am back on my track, I realized how effective it is and how much I took it for granted. But now I know, if it works stick with it. Not everything else works as well... told you it was silly thing that generated the whole series of thoughts.

Gentle Persistence

I am taking Hatha Yoga classes during summer while my dance school is on a summer break. I have done yoga for a long time and there have been long stretches where I didn’t do it but I started when I was in elementary school (as part of the school curriculum) and the good thing is even if my mind forgets it sometimes, the body remembers. After a few initial tugs and pulls, the body goes back to its usual ductile self.
It also gives my mind some stability which has been giving me a hard time lately, I don’t think I am loosing it but I am not hanging on to it very tight either… Will write about that some other time for now it’s about Yoga.
It’s a good activity for me and my girls get involved too. Somu learns yoga at school and so its fun when she shows me different poses. One day, she during butterfly pose, she asked me what kind of butterfly am I and what color and it was interesting to think like that. I love butterflies and draw a lot of inspiration from them but never thought about the kind of butterfly I’d like to be. Divi also just loves to join in and see if she can stretch her legs and how far she can go…

So, every Saturday after Yoga class and when my mind is all tranquil after the meditation session, one thing or the other pops up as an inspiration and it sort of conditions my mind and my general attitude. This week’s Mantra is ‘gentle persistence’. Its reference was made in terms yoga practice and how to achieve balance and just to be able to do some poses but I think it’s equally applicable in life… gentle persistence can go a long way; with people, with work, with my goals (if there are any), just training my mind…
Forging ahead beyond the flexibility of the situation makes things rebound often but the way sought with gentle persistence keeps me going may be slow at times but consistently moving ahead and for some reason mind draws a lot of pleasure from looking ahead, contemplating future and having something to dream about…