A Mindful Mess

Recently Zach, Addison and I packed up, grabbed the dog and tucked away on a camping trip in the woods for a few glorious days off the grid. We put our phones away and lived simply. Our days were spent hiking in nearby Shenandoah and our nights roasting marshmallows over a campfire. It was the perfect getaway. One morning we found a hike nearby on a trail called Graves Mill, it promised waterfalls and river crossings and we couldn't wait to check it out. We grabbed the do

My daughter Addison is 10 and she is a sensational kid. She is wise beyond her years, kind and compassionate towards all. She has lovely manners and a whole lot of spunk (it is one of her most charming characteristics). She makes us laugh constantly and has more confidence than the average 50 year old. She is a firecracker and we are lucky that she always listens and follows the rules. Now being the spit fire that she is, she will always voice how she feels about the rul

12 weeks ago we all got the rugged pulled out from under us. Seemingly overnight, everything got shut down and we entered into a period of life that can only be referred to as the great "global pause." We no longer have access to the things, establishments and people we know and love. We are stuck, at home, unable to move forward. Everything has come to a hault, our life, our future plans, our progress, our forward momentum. You are not alone if you feel like the wind has

My beloved daughter Addison is my greatest teacher. She teaches me more than all the wise amazing world renowned teachers I have been lucky enough to study with in my career. She never fails to simply shine the light on profound life teachings from the path of #mindfulness as if the #buddha himself put the words into her mouth. Addison has this best friend named Mina and they have been inseparable since they first met on the bus on the very first day of kindergarden. Now i

Last week I was away on retreat for the opening weekend of an amazing two year journey for Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification with my teachers Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. While we were there we did some amazing exercises together in groups with our fellow students, listened to some mind blowing lectures with Jack and Tara and did some pretty intense self work. In one particular moving meditation exercise I had a juicy breakthrough. Like the big "Ah ha" moments w

On December 1st, Zach, Addison and I moved into a new home! Over our many years together Zach and I have moved a few times. We can always handle it ourselves, normally getting help from my Dad or a friend. The moves always go as smooth as moving can go. It is of course a lot of work, but always managable. We woke up Saturday, moving day and unfortunately poor Zach got a stomach bug! Ugh. Along the way, my #mindfulness journey has taught me to welcome in each new part of

I recently bought a new hammock for my back porch, the kind that needs to be drilled into a support beam and hung from the ceiling. Now I am not very handy at all. I have very little experience with power tools so when I saw the instructions for installation involved drilling a hole as the first step, I was bummed. My husband Zach wasn't home to install it for me and the thought of waiting all day to enjoy this hammock sucked. I was like "you know what how hard can this be

I have been lucky enough to study Anatomy with world renowned anatomy expert and body worker Tom Myers. He is a legend in my field and has taught me everything I know about the amazing human body. He lives in Maine and travels the world speaking and teaching about the human body so when I heard he was coming to Virgina to give a weekend seminar all about the deep core in #yoga (pelvic floor, diaphragm and all that jazz). I cleared my schedule so I could go. People from eve

Buying this studio makes both my husband Zach and myself business owners!!! We try to be very #mindful everyday about how this affects our daughter Addison, who just turned 8! So when she brought to our attention the other day that we haven't been on one single family vacation all summer, we stopped everything and immediately jumped into action. We needed to take our sweet girl away somewhere, make it epic and fun to show to her, that we work hard, but she comes first. Whe

Our neighbors are out of the country this month and they asked us to watch their hamster Peanut.  We have had him for about two weeks now and it is very obvious that Peanut has a strong, daily predictable pattern to his life.  He sleeps in the back left corner of his cage all morning (who knew hamsters were nocturnal), then when the afternoon sun peake through the windows of my daughter's bedroom he climbs into this tube attached to his cage and go back to sleep some more.  T

We have all been there...a rough day, an achy body, a busy mind that just won't slow down and give you 5 minutes of peace. We visit these feelings often and our tactic for dealing is often the same, we ignore, avoid, complain. We are unable to accept things most times and that is ok! It's a part of our human conditioning, a common automatic response that comes from the beauty of our primitive brain still alive and calling the shots today. Our #mindfulness practice, as alwa

I used to be the most reactive person there is. I would lightly stub my toe and every expletive would fly out of my mouth. If someone cut me off in traffic you would be embarrassed to hear me rage in the privacy of my own car. If I dropped something on the floor I would drop the F-bomb aggressively. I had a strong reaction to everything, didn't matter what it was...I would make my reaction known. Reactivity is something we all can relate to. We are all closeted reactiv