Stayin' grounded this summer

This summer has been filled with everything from canoe-in camping with dogs to presenting at a national conference in Philadelphia, and leading the h&t yoga + goals retreat in June! I have found that the more I stay open to experiences that light me up, the better I am able to greet the unexpected and stay present in the face of intensity and yes, fear. When I do the things I love, like teaching yoga, public speaking and sharing my story, I ALWAYS get some butterflies. I’ve long since learned that fear is just the tax I pay on doing what I love. My personal mantra has become “I don’t let fear get in my way”. It gets to hang out, but I keep on groovin all the same. Here are my notes to self for staying grounded in the face of 🦋’s:

Be gentle. I am 100% human and moments of anxiety, distraction and fear happen. When I find myself here, I don’t get angry or judgy I just gently bring my myself back with a reminder to feel & breathe.

Say yes to friends. When I spend time in connection to friends, I soak it up. I bask in their smiles, stories and eye contact. This process of showing up, and truly being present with the people in my life keeps me grounded and connected.

Gratitude. When I feel any kind of emotional spiral coming on, I just remind myself of all that I’m grateful for and what a privilege it is to share what I love and have a public voice, however tangential, eloquent or shaky it may be. 

It’s not a competition. I remind myself that I am in competition with nobody and all I am asked to do is to stay present, be my authentic self and keep showing up moment-by-moment. This doesn’t mean that everyone will like and accept me, and that’s okay too. As my amazing yoga mentor MaryBeth LaRue likes to say “it’s not my job to manage your perception of me”.

Mindful breaks. When things gear up and get uncomfortable, my lizard brain usually wants to escape. Instead of surrendering to every impulse, I mindfully schedule time to tune-out temporarily with things like an hour of reading a juicy novel or watching few episodes of BBC Fleabag. 

Physical practice: in times of stress, I both resist and crave my physical practice of yoga & mediation more than ever. These things are my oxygen mask in times of intensity and I make it a priority to get my butt to the mat or pillow on a regular basis. At my conference I woke up early each day to watch the sunrise, drink my coffee and then move my body into a few poses, ending with meditation. My practice was not advanced or pre-planned, I just followed my body where it wanted to go, even if that was a restorative pose on a giant pile of hotel pillows. 

What I’m reading & listening to:

+Judith Lasater “Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life”

+This playlist I made on Spotify

+Amber Rae @heyamberrae on Instagram

+The Unf*ck your brain podcast

“Practice is the consistent willingness to open to life in all of its joy and pain”

— Judith Lasater

Honey & Thistle Co. Yoga + Goals Retreat, June 2019

A playlist from me to you ⛅️

New season, new playlist! Here are a few favorites I’ve got on heavy rotation this Spring. I believe that music is powerful medicine, it helps me process, express and feel. I find it amazing how certain albums connect with different seasons of my life and have helped me move through everything from celebration to grief. Bob Dylan “Blood on the Tracks” got me through some heavy teen angst, and Neko Case helps me feel brave, badass and human. Days when I’m missing my dad, I can grab a vinyl record from the collection of over 500 albums he left me, and whether it’s Mozart or Armstrong, he’s forever there in the music we share. Here’s to the silly, sad and lovely moments made better by music.

Save the date! Yoga + Goals Retreat in Naples, New York is coming on June 8!

Join Honey & Thistle Co. in the gorgeous setting of Naples, NY for a day of gentle yoga, goal setting, and heart-filled connection. This small group retreat is designed to awaken your goals and get to the heart of what matters most in 2019! The retreat will be held inside a cozy cabin with open space for yoga and if the weather is nice, we will take our practice outside too! 

On this retreat, we will reconnect with our values, refocus our energy and begin planning a new way forward with goals and tactics that support your best, most badass self! With my background and experience in health coaching and yoga teaching, I’ll help you apply inspired action to your good intentions, moving you from wanting and wishing to a courageous new way of being.

On this retreat we will:

+Move our bodies through a gentle yoga flow & restorative practice

+Explore the connection between our goals, values, and desires

+Connect with each other & nature in a deliberately small group

+Examine what's working & what's not

+ Identify obstacles and how to work through them

+Build a powerful vision board for your future

+Ground with a growth mindset and mindful intentions

+Discover energy supporting habits and strategies

+Begin to transform the willingness to change into actual change

Sample Schedule--subject to slight modification

Saturday, June 8, 2019 9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m.

• Welcome greeting & introductions

• Light flow yoga (beginner friendly)

• Goals workshop + vision boarding

• Lunch

• Contemplation time: enjoy a short hike or reflective journaling!

• Restorative yoga and meditation

Light snacks, yoga props, and lunch provided. If you need a yoga mat or have any questions please email rebecca@honeyandthistle.com.

Letting go to let in

Spring is my favorite season. In my natural habitat, it means round robbins, budding greenery, muddy boots, and windswept hair. In my professional landscape of higher education, it signals multiple projects, deadlines, and the urgency to meet enrollment and development goals. Normally, I feel spread thin around this time of year, not fully able to stop and smell the daffodils. However, this year I’ve tried something different. I decided to come face to face with my own BS and give it up in an effort to give myself what I was truly craving.

What had to go:

+Thinking about work 24/7.

+Letting my self-care habits slide in the name of “stress” or “busy”.

+Excessive social media scrolling and/or Netflix binging .

+Social obligations that leave me feeling depleted.

+Processed carbohydrates + sugar and the energy roller coaster they leave behind.

+Long ass to-do lists (I gave myself a limit of 4 things on my daily list).

+Over planning (my inner Leslie Knope was distraught).

+Stress running.

+Attachment to specific outcomes.

What I let in:

+Starting each morning with my ritual couch sit, candlelight, coffee and dog snuggles.

+Setting a stopping point with my work each day, and letting it be enough.

+Built-in practices to help me stay present: studio yoga, meditation and friend time.

+Setting a 1-hour social media limit on my phone, and mostly respecting it (progress, not perfection).

+A new habit of asking myself “how is this making me feel?” while scrolling my most addictive app (Instagram) and choosing to shut it down when the answer is “shitty/drained”.

+Making time for inspiring friends & co-workers: our lunches, yoga dates, couch confessions and shared cups of tea gave me life. Thank you all 🙏

+Eating real food via the Whole 30 and feeling my energy soar (hello 🐯 blood!).

+Filling my to-do list with essentials only (mostly food, clothing, yoga and cozy related).

+Asking “how can I care for myself?" throughout the day and then following through.

+Choosing indulgences mindfully like allowing myself to watch the Amy Schumer Netflix special or a few episodes of Shrill cuddled on the couch with my dog Ella and a bowl of berries.

+Committing to “one day/task at a time” re: less planning to stay in the moment and not freak the eff out.

+Reserving time in the evening for rest. A cup of herbal tea spiked with CBD oil, reading fiction in bed, going to restorative yoga or again, my favorite thing: cuddling on the couch with my dogs and doing nothing.

What I got out of it:

Solid habits that love me back and a surge of rebel energy. In the face of stress, the act of slowing down and saying yes to myself despite all the other stuff I could have let consume me was so empowering. It turns out babying myself made me feel like a total badass.

Interested in learning more about habit creation? I’m teaching my “Sustain don’t drain: creating energy giving habits that stick” class at the Rochester Brainery on May, 16!

Doing Hard Things.

One of my favorite parts of being an adult is the ability to say no to shit I don’t want to do. As awesome and freeing as this adult superpower can be, it also feels emotional and hard at times. Because at least for me, getting over my fear of letting others down, layers of expectation, and getting over myself can be a real challenge. However, the more I flex this muscle, the more I am able to live from a place that feels authentic and right to me, rather than what is expected by others or my own internal critic.  

As I gear up for a new set of personal and professional challenges this spring I keep reminding and whispering to myself “you are capable of doing hard things”. Things like:

+Allowing space and time for solitude and quiet in my days (without judgment).

+Sleeping or meditating on things before making a decision.

+Asking myself: do I want this? ...really? And respecting the answer that comes up.

+Putting down my damn phone & respecting my boundaries with tech & social media.

+Resting and binging masterpiece theater with my dogs & tea when I feel myself getting sick.

+Sending professional emails, articles, and proposals to people I respect and admire.

+Inviting those I love into my schedule and my space. Giving them my full attention.

+Saying yes to foods that make me feel good for the long haul, not just 15 minutes of chocolatey bliss.  

+Acknowledging when something feels hard, or when I’m afraid...then digging deeper to figure out the emotions behind it.

Feeling the emotions and then moving on like a Jedi master, because yes, I am capable of doing hard things and so are you. It might not get easier, but we get stronger and a little bit wiser each time we consciously choose.

January and the snuggle is real

January is a month I have always had a love/hate relationship with. I love the still, quiet introspection of winter and struggle with feelings of cabin fever as the days grow colder. The theme that I keep coming back to this month is the importance of staying awake and learning how to power down without tuning-out. How to stay with myself when the urge to hibernate kicks into full gear. It’s knowing the difference between scrolling my phone mindlessly and pausing to check-in with myself to determine what I really need to feel rested and whole?

The answer to that question changes moment to moment, this month it looks like this:

+Sitting with myself in meditation even when my mind and body are resisting.

+Building in extra time for dog snuggles and moments of pause, especially in the morning.

+Connecting with the outdoors in new ways: gazing out a window at the snow falling, or taking time to appreciate the sunset as I walk from my office to my car (where I took this picture).

+Thinking about what I do and don’t want in the year/week ahead and writing it down, without judgement.

+Choosing to chat and spend time with people who feel like sunshine.

+Daydreaming and planning future adventures. Mine include: summer camping and a trip to CA.

+Balancing body movement with body rest and understanding my need for both.

+Breaking my social media & device twitch (currently with the help of the book “Bored and Brilliant” by Manoush Zomorodi who is a muse and queen 🙌.

+Embracing the “do not disturb” setting as a vacation from my phone, or when that doesn’t work, literally stuffing it into my desk drawer until I’m ready to consciously engage again.

+Feeling into gnarly emotions and questions without the need for immediate answers or solutions.

+Reminding myself that I am a grown ass woman who can navigate her own way to happiness, without expectation or the need to please others.

What are you feeling into this time of the year?

xo,

Rebecca

Silver Lake

This picture doesn’t look like much, but it captures one of my favorite moments of 2018: sitting with my long time friend, Janine in a meadow by silver lake and feeling totally content. It’s not a great photo and it fails to show the chain link fence around the reservoir or capture just how much joy I felt in that moment. Magical, significant and playful are the words that come to mind when I think about that trip. It’s amazing how certain places, people and events just feel important, even if I can’t explain or understand exactly why. I’m letting go of needing to figure it out or assign meaning. Instead I’m learning to savor the sundrenched reality of laughter and stretching out over a park bench with my best friend.

xo,

Rebecca