In yoga class, after the final Sun Salutation, I invite my students to stand for a moment and listen to their heartbeat. And they listen. And I wait for them to listen, and I listen too. But then something else begins to happen. They start to anticipate. I can feel this anticipation rise like a deep wave in the ocean and ripple through the room. They want the thing that’s coming next. Because the thing that’s coming next is the reason most of them came in the first place. They’ve been slogging for an hour through postures like Three-legged Dog and Cobra and Locust and Crow. They’ve been trying their best, twisting their tired, tight bodies into Triangles and Trees and Tables, and now, finally, it’s time. It’s time to play dead.

The final pose of every yoga class is one called Savasana, which is Sanskrit for “Corpse pose.” It’s the pose where you lie on your back and practice being dead. Except that I don’t refer to it as “Corpse pose.” I don’t emphasize the “dead” part of it. Instead I say, “It’s time to integrate the practice,” (which is true). Or I say, “It’s time to let your body “set” like Jell-O,” (which is also true). Or I say, “It’s time to take a little nap, like in kindergarten, except without the cookies,” (also true, I don’t serve cookies).

Because if I were to say, “Now I would like you all to lie on the floor and contemplate your mortality and the fact that one day you will be dead,” maybe people wouldn’t be so keen to do that, and that might be bad for business.

So instead I allow them to think of Savasana as “nap time” and they are happy about that and go immediately into their “nest making” routines. Some fold multiple blankets into complex origamis of shoulder and neck supports. Others take bolsters and position them “just so” under their knees, or lie back over them, offering their throats and hearts up to the sky. Some just put on socks and a hoodie. Some cinch the hoods so tightly around their faces they look like little Unabombers. Most of them place eye bags over their eyes.

And then in my best Valium voice I take them down into their bodies. I give them permission to let go. I take them deeply into the places they hold tension: jaws, necks, shoulders, low backs. I encourage them to melt, to surrender the weight of their bodies to the earth.

And then I watch them. I hold the space for them. And for me, this is the most sacred time of all, and my most important function as their yoga teacher. I watch over them. I watch my vibrantly alive, breathing, aching, complaining, chronically tight and overly-stressed students, die.

Some twitch involuntarily. Some fall asleep and snore. But most of them drop into the deep, soft beds of themselves. I watch over them as they sink into the primordial ooze. Expression melts from their faces and they become totally real, and in this “practiced death” more fully alive than when they were “ocean breathing” during Downward-facing Dog.

And then, sadly, I must bring them back to life. The incantation I use is this: I say, “Begin to deepen your breath. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Come back to your body. If you’re wearing an eye bag, remove it now. Begin to stretch—a long, languorous, luxurious stretch. Slowly bend your knees. Roll over to your favorite side. Begin to let the day back in. Notice the color of the day. Notice the sounds from outside. Notice how you feel.”

And then, slowly, they begin to press up to a seated position. They look out the window at the sky. Their eyes reflect the light of the day, but also something deeper, something intangible and curious. I am sad that they can’t stay longer in this deep, soft stillness. But they can’t. They have to go home, or to work, or otherwise rejoin the program already in progress. So we chant “Om,” and look into each others eyes and bow “Namaste,” and then they go.

But one time, a woman stayed behind. “I have to call my husband,” she said, “because I don’t think I can drive now.” “Okay,” I said. And we talked quietly for a while and eventually she said, ‘Okay. I think I can make it home on my own now. It’s not easy coming back from the dead, you know.”

“I know,” I said.

From my second story studio window I watched over her as she made her way across the street, got into her car and drove away.

“Namaste,” I whispered.

©2008

Tragically, I think I have fallen in with the ranks of “The Boring Food People.” Recent evidence? When I bumped into my hair stylist in Wegman's the other day, I started talking to her about the virtues of Ezekiel 4:9 Sprouted Wheat Bread, instead of how cute her shoes were.

For a few months now I have been doing this "food thing.” I don't want to call it a "diet" because it's not really a diet (even though it probably IS); and I don't want to call it a "detox" either, because that makes it sound like some gastro-intestinal haz-mat dump procedure, and it isn’t that either. What this “food thing” involves is the simple elimination of dairy, sugar and flour from my diet. And why am I doing this? I don’t really know.

It was only going to last for 3 weeks. That’s because I can do anything for 3 weeks. Actually 4 weeks, but let’s not quibble. (See April’s Mt. Home.) And the timing was perfect because it was spring when I started, and what better time for a dietary clean-out-the-pipes thing than spring, right?

That first week was rough, though. Nothing I had on hand was anything I could eat. But after a spendy trip to Wegman’s, I was both psychologically and fiscally committed. I netted so much lettuce-y looking foods you'd think I was raising rabbits. I bought escarole. I bought agave nectar. I bought quinoa (which I can even pronounce now). I bought buckwheat groats and amaranth and even a fennel bulb.

It was hard at first, what with all the chopping and the mincing and the sautéing and the stirring and the angst-y worrying: “Is this what this stuff is supposed to LOOK like? But now I am a complete convert to this dairy-free, wheat-free, sugar-free, whole foods lifestyle. The only trouble is I can’t seem to stop talking about it. I am obsessed with food and shopping and label-reading and if you get me started talking about it, you WILL be sorry. (Just ask Emily, my hair stylist.) And if I happen to show up on your doorstep with a pamphlet and an armload of kale? Just pretend you aren’t home.

I’m not doing this because I have to. I don’t have allergies. I’m not diabetic. I don’t have celiac disease. There isn’t any real reason for me to join the ranks of the fanatical foodies. But since I’ve started eating this way, I feel light and clean and I have more energy than a baby ferret. Something is clearly UP with this food thing.

But the downside is I may be becoming just a teensy bit of a pain in the ass. Evidence? The other night at dinner I asked my hostess, “These glazed veggies? What did you glaze them with?” “Brown sugar,” she said. “Have you ever tried glazing with agave nectar?” I said. Her eyes glazed over.

So you want to know what I ate today (so far)?

1 cup of coffee (half decaf/half regular) with soymilk. (The decaf is Starbuck's Komodo Dragon which is decaffeinated w/o chemicals.)

1 Vans All Natural Wheat-free /Gluten-free blueberry waffle topped with cashew butter, organic mixed berries (frozen but thawed and warmed up) sweetened with a touch of Raw Organic Agave Nectar.

While reading the Sunday Times, I munched on Mary's Gone Crackers (Gluten free, Original flavor).

And now, while I'm writing this and trying to decide what to have for dinner, I am crunching on dry roasted edamame (lightly salted).

Scintillating reading, this, no? But now do you see what I mean?? This is what I have BECOME .

And what’s worse, a big part of me thinks YOU should care about this. Why? I don’t even KNOW! All I know is that I can’t seem to stop TALKING about it. (Or, pressing Caps Lock, apparently.) It’s like there is something in this food that is making me talk about the benefits of amaranth and cold expeller pressed oil, at odd and startlingly inappropriate moments, to anyone who will listen.

And what’s more: there is a big part of me that believes that if everyone started eating quinoa and glazing with agave nectar, the whole world would be a better place, and all of our problems would be solved, including global warming and the mortgage foreclosure catastrophe.

And yesterday? I dumped the petunias and planted lettuce in ALL the flower boxes on the porch.

There is a 12-Step program for this, right

©2008

All my life, as far back as I can remember, I wanted to fix my mother. I wanted to “clean up her act.”

In my childhood fantasy, I saw myself tippy-toeing down to the kitchen in the middle of the night and doing all the dishes in hot, soapy water. I would dry them with a terry towel and put them away. I would then scour the countertops, remove months of built-up grease from the stove top, and polish the chrome kettle until it gleamed. After sweeping and mopping the floor, I would then creep back to bed and wait for morning, as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve.

In my fantasy, my mother would awaken the next morning with her usual hangover, coughing her two-pack-a-day cough, and stagger to the kitchen expecting to encounter the usual month’s accumulation of moldy food stuck to melamine plates, curdled liquids in half-filled coffee cups, overflowing ashtrays and a vast array of empty tonic bottles.

In my fantasy, she would reel back in amazement to see the empty sink, the pristine countertops, the gleaming kettle. And then, in a moment of pure awakening, my mother would see at last, a new way of being, a new possibility for how to live. It would be, anachronistically, a moment of “shock and awe.”

She would then (in my fantasy) ask me to show her how in the world I had worked this miracle. And I would. And after the kitchen, we would have the vacuuming lesson in which I would sit her down and explain the intricacies of bag replacement, and the marvels of the retractable cord. In my dream, my 9 year-old self would watch proudly as my mother squired the Kirby canister through the network of rooms that was our Levittown ranch.

We would then move on to the yard, and I would show her how to prime and start the lawnmower, and how to wield a trowel. Side by side, mother and daughter, we would plant a border of petunias and marigolds in the front yard.

After my mother died I had a lot to do: see lawyers, pay bills, and make calls—the usual “executrix of the will” stuff, the obligatory “dutiful daughter” stuff, onerous, burdensome tasks that only fueled my tendency to procrastinate.

Instead, I cleaned. I scraped moldy food from plates, and gagged as

curdled and reeking stuff slurped down the drain. I filled two black garbage bags with tonic bottles and another two with Vodka bottles. It took me three days of non-stop scouring to make the kitchen somewhat decent.

The old Kirby canister, an antique by now, was still in mint condition in the closet, as if it had never been used. The old lawnmower had rusted in the garage, and still no flowers grew.

All my life, as far back as I can remember, I wanted to fix my mother. I wanted to clean up her act. The day I sold my childhood home, I walked one last time through the empty rooms, denuded of furniture and dishes and vacuums and lawnmowers. The realtor had hired a lawn service to clean up the yard.

I realized that day that only death could fix my mother. The only thing I could do was clean her house.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

Here’s a confession: I have a sick addiction to books that promise permanent, personal change in 30 Days. 30 Days to a Flatter Stomach, a Simpler Life, a Job Promotion? Bring it. 30 Days to Learn Hindi, Master the Stock Market, and Get Over the Dork You Used to Call Your Boyfriend? Better yet.

I don’t actually buy these books. I’m too embarrassed (because c’mon, really.) But I do stand in Barnes and Noble and skim them. Because I am that person who can do anything for 30 Days.

Examples: I was a vegan for 30 days. I meditated everyday for 30 days. I took a digital picture and posted it online for 30 days in a row. I quit coffee for 30 days, and sugar, and alcohol (but not in the same 30 days.) I became a ridiculously early riser for 30 whole days. I started a conversation with a stranger every day for 30 days (which wasn’t such a good idea.)

I posted an entry on my blog every day for 30 days. For 30 days I committed to reading an hour in a book that was not work or school related. I walked an hour a day for 30 days. I even stopped reading while I ate for 30 days.

The thing about doing these things for 30 Days and only 30 Days is that I am then free to go back to sleeping in, drinking coffee and eating while reading if I want to after the 30 days are up. I don’t have to change my whole life forever, and I like that. But during these weird little 30-Day money-back, no obligation, risk-free “trial periods” I can experiment with being a different kind of person—the kind of person who doesn’t eat meat, or drink coffee, or eat sugar, for instance. For 30 days I can be a little bit strange, a little bit odd, even a little bit “off” (as in the case during the no-coffee experiment).

And then, after the 30 days are up, I have 30 days worth of results to look at. I then know, with absolute certainty, how I operate when my life has more veggies, less sleep, more human interaction, or less stress. After the results are in, if I want to continue, I can re-up for another 30 days, risk-free. I found that being a vegan was too hard for me, for instance, but I did like how I felt with no meat in my diet. So, now I know.

By the time this issue of Mt. Home hits the stands, I will be into a 30 Day Yoga Challenge at my studio. I have challenged people to see if they can practice yoga for 30 days in a row, and I have made it financially enticing for them to do so (30 Days for $30). It will be interesting to see these people experimenting with being “a person who practices yoga everyday” if only for 30 days. I predict the first 2 weeks will be the hardest as people realize that yoga feels on the inside a lot different that it looks on the outside. But I’m one of those people who believe if you haven’t tried something for at least 30 days you simply don’t understand it.

I predict that the Challenge participants will start to become a little different, a little strange, even a tiny bit odd during their 30 days of practicing yoga, and that’s okay. They will at least know, with absolute certainty, what it feels like to be fully human and fully alive for a brief time. Then, if that becomes too much, they can revert back to their old ways. But at least they will be able to say that at one point in their lives they used to be a person who did yoga every day. They will have tried it for 30 days, so now they will know.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com

On Friday night I was channel surfing and came upon an old movie that scared the living daylights out of me as a kid. The movie was The Day The Earth Stood Still, an old 50s Sci-fi flick.

In this movie, an envoy from outer space is sent to Earth because it has come to the attention of the galactic neighborhood that we Earthlings have discovered atomic energy and are planning to use it aggressively. Mr Carpenter, the alien, completely disguised as “one of us” is told by a respected American scientist that if he wants to capture peoples’ attention and get his message across, he will need to do something really, really dramatic, but not destructive. Mr. Carpenter decides he will stop the Earth for half an hour, from noon to 12:30 the following day.

So at noon, everything stops. Cars won’t start. Trains don’t move. Phones don’t work. There are shots of stilled manufacturing plants. Big Ben does not toll. Nothing moves. Nothing works. In China, in London, on farms in Kansas, people are frantic. They are shown out in the streets, pulling their hair, falling to their knees, looking up at the sky, reaching with outstretched arms. Please! Help! What have we done?? In short, there is much existential angst.

Then, suddenly, at 12:30, everything starts up again. But then Mr. Carpenter is found out for the alien he is and the army shoots him. His robot, “Gort” brings him back to life briefly so he can make one last impassioned plea to us Earthlings before they take off in their spaceship. Here’s what he says (more or less):

“Beware Earthlings. If you use your atomic power aggressively, you will affect the entire galaxy, so we will have no other recourse but to destroy you. Remember: We are watching.”

Then, they take off.

Back then, I think the reason this movie scared me so much was because I knew we would not heed Mr. Carpenter. I knew, even then, that as a species, we Earthlings were profoundly stupid. I feared the end of the planet was coming. And very soon.

Watching it this time though, what captured my attention most was the “stilling of the Earth.” When the earth stood still there was this breathless, tense present. People were completely stuck being themselves without any distractions. Nowadays, it would be like losing cell service or the internet. Nobody could even text you and say, “Dude. Do you not have service either?” You wouldn’t even be able to turn on CNN and get the Breaking News.

But this time I saw a link between the stilling of the earth and meditation. Yes, this is precisely what I do, what every meditator does. Every time we sit down we make The Earth Stand Still. And we do it because we know there is a message, a warning, or something else we need to know for our survival, waiting to get through to us. And the only way we will be able to “get it” is this way, this very dramatic, but not destructive way: We have to sit down, shut up and be still.

At first there is a lot of hemming and hawing and hand-wringing about whether we really should make the Earth stand still, especially today, given that there is a dump truck loaded with work idling right outside our door. But soon, even those thoughts drop away. And as we notice that our heart is beating, and we are breathing, the merry-go-round of our life slowly grinds to a halt. Now there is a little bit more space. If there is some message out there we need to get, now it can get through because we’ve hung up the phone, our line isn’t busy. We’ve made the Earth stand still.

When the movie was over, I knew my present interest in meditating and silence and yoga began all those years ago, when, as an eight year-old, I watched The Day The Earth Stood Still. Back then I thought it was all about the spaceship and Gort and Mr. Carpenter. But now I know it was about that scene of suspended animation, of everything quiet: no car horns honking, no power lines buzzing, no machines grinding out living that brought me to the meditation cushion and the yoga mat.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

I am becoming more and more convinced that we are defined by the things we love. Not by the people we love, (though they are more than happy to define us), and not by our jobs (which can change an average of four times during our lifetime), but by the things. There is even a new trend in obituaries which bears this out. In more and more obituaries, after the naming of survivors, there is a small list of the things the deceased loved. For example: “Mary loved crossword puzzles, quilting and bird watching.” Or, “Jack loved fly fishing, the NY Yankees and playing gin rummy.”

I love this trend, yet it always makes me a little sad too, because I wish the list was longer. I know Mary and Jack loved more than those things, and I want to know what other things? What else did they love?

So with Valentine’s Day afoot I thought: “What better time to make my list; a list of things I love, the things which, for better or for worse defined me. At first I could only think of things like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but then I warmed to the task and came up with over a hundred things before supper time. Here is a partial list (in no particular order): I love to iron. I love to pick lint out of the vacuum brush with a toothpick. I love Sudoku puzzles and sitting up to my neck in hot, bubbly water.

I love the day the screens go on. I love cinnamon toast and falling asleep on the couch in the afternoon with golf on TV. I love fireworks and the smell of play dough and a Bombay Sapphire martini, up, with a twist.

I love the Rose Parade and Mallow Cups and those tiny flowers that grow above tree line. I love marching bands and Easy Pass and root beer floats. I love being part of a cheering crowd at a major league baseball game. I love movies that end with reconciliations after long estrangements.

I love champagne and catalpa trees and puppy breath. I love roller coasters, cedar waxwings and the little spit sink at the dentist. I love the sound of ankles popping in yoga class and eating with chopsticks. I love a great massage, jumping double dutch and looking down at the ground from an airplane.

There’s more on my list, but the point of all this is that the things that we love want to love us, too. They are there all the time, all around us, waiting for us to notice them and love them. That’s because it is only when we love them that they can come into being. It may be hard to imagine a Sudoku puzzle waiting for you to love it, and in fact it’s not really the puzzle itself that waits, it’s that part of your brain that loves to work in that weird way and only gets to do so through the puzzle.

Everything you love wakes up a different part of you and lets it become real and alive. And when you notice that you love something, then you are living “in love.” Loving is simply the act of noticing that you love what you love.

So I invite you to do it. Make a list of all the things you love. Keep adding to it as you notice more and more things. They can be silly things or serious things. The only criterion is that you love them. Every time you hear yourself say, “I love that!” write it down. Keep a “life list” like bird watchers do, of all the things you notice that you love. The longer your list, the more “definition” you will have as a human being. Some people say, “You are what you eat.” I say, “You are what you love.”

email-mainstreetyoga@gmail.com

you can view past articles at http://www.mountainhomemag.com/

Most mothers want to protect their children, not underwrite their nervous breakdowns. But in my defense, my daughter wanted this nervous breakdown, needed it, asked for it as a college graduation gift. “Nervous breakdown” is what I called it; she called it a “transformative life experience” that was to come in the form of a month-long residential yoga teacher training program. I thought college was supposed to be this “transformative experience,” but it disappointed. So for her graduation present, I wrote the check.

But I warned her: “You think yoga teacher training is going to be all spiritual and quasi-athletic, but they are going to take you apart and put you back together in a whole new way. You won’t even recognize yourself at the end of the month. You sure you want this?”

Only a few years earlier she had watched and listened to the blow-by-blow account of my own personal transformation at Kripalu, at the age of 51, when I submitted to yoga teacher training. She had watched her mother drive off frightened and wavering about her life’s purpose and direction, and return clear and steady. And now, she wanted this for herself. Who could blame her?

But I worried. Transformation isn’t the kind of thing that can be scheduled into your Covey Planner. Transformation is all about timing. Like the koan about the teacher appearing when the student is ready, the individual has to be ripe, the stage set. Maybe she was ready. She thought she was.

I also worried that she might be more in love with the image of the yoga teacher, with its stretchy couture and its eco-friendly accoutrements, than with the heavy responsibilities that come with taking people into areas of themselves they haven’t been in a long time, if ever. And I also knew that in order to guide others into these dark areas, she would have to go there herself.

When I did my training at age 51, I had been practicing yoga on my own fairly regularly for over 30 years. I didn’t go to the training because I wanted to teach, but because I had hit a wall in my practice. I kept feeling that there were all these important things going on beyond the postures that I just wasn’t getting. I felt that my teachers were “holding back” on me; that they knew “secrets,” that only teachers got to know. I wanted in on those secrets.

I drove myself to Kripalu for my month-long training in a cold rain. I felt giddy with excitement. Then I felt afraid. Then I felt nauseous. Then I felt sheer, gasping-for-breath, paralyzing panic. I clutched the steering wheel. What was I thinking? I couldn’t even do a headstand. Hell, I couldn’t even do a decent forward bend! I was 51 years old for chrissakes! What was I doing? Who did I think I was? What the hell was the matter with me? I pulled off the road and considered turning back. I sat for a while, cried, shifted the car back into drive and kept going. It continued to pour.

A month later, on the drive back to Mansfield, my clothes smelled like incense. I still had the red tilak paste bindi on my forehead from the graduation ceremony. When I stopped in Cooperstown for my first cup of coffee in a month, the cashier looked at me funny. In my strange mental state I thought he could probably tell that I now had “the secret of yoga,” but then I saw my face in the rearview mirror and knew that I just looked like a peculiar woman with a red dot on her forehead.

Yoga school had spiritually “rolfed” me. Rolfing is a hands-on manipulation of the body that hurts a lot, but releases, realigns and balances you. But instead of just rolfing my body, yoga teacher training had realigned and balanced my whole conception of myself. All those questions I had asked on the drive to Kripalu: What was I doing? Who did I think I was? What the hell was the matter with me? Had been answered.

I had gotten what I went there for: the “secret of yoga.” And it only took one explosive bonfire of anger, sixteen sleepless nights, a quart of ink spilled into three notebooks, eight pounds of tofu and two gallons of tears.

And now my daughter said she wanted this too. Or her version of it. And although part of me felt flattered and validated, another part recoiled at the thought of my baby going through such inevitable existential pain, alone, in a dorm room filled with twenty other souls suffering similar, sleepless hells.

So I sat her down and told her the secret of yoga. After all, why should she have to go through all that suffering if I already knew it and could just tell her? Wasn’t it the parent’s job to smooth the way for the progeny? And the “secret” wasn’t even a secret. We were never sworn to secrecy with blood or spit or ritual. So this is what I told her:

“The path of yoga is NOT like getting on Rte 80, taking the westbound ramp and ending up in Pittsburgh. On this path, you get on Rte 80 and your car immediately breaks down. You then spend the rest of your life trying to get it up and running again. And while you sit on the side of the road it rains a lot. And most of the time it’s dark. And then there’s fog. And it’s either too hot or too cold. And meanwhile everyone else seems to be zooming along just fine, having intense, amazing, mind-blowing experiences, whereas you are sitting, broken down, on the side of the road. And this is the path of yoga, your path if you really want to go this way. But what you will learn at yoga school is not just how it feels to face this broken-downness, but how to accept it, --and this is the kicker—and, how to be happy about it!”

I might as well have been trying to describe what blue looks like to a blind person. She tried to understand. She really did. She even tried to believe me, but I could tell she didn’t. Some things you have to find out for yourself, and this was one of them.

I drove her to Kripalu. I met her roommates, helped her unpack, and left. The next time I saw her, I knew she KNEW. She looked beat, she looked beautiful, and she took one look at me and started laughing and crying hysterically.

After her graduation ceremony we drove home together. This time she was the one who smelled of incense and sported the red dot in the middle of her forehead. She looked more tender and vulnerable than I had seen her since her days as a baby in a crib.

She never had that nervous breakdown, she said. Instead, her transformation came in the form of a total disarmament. During her training she was challenged to lay down all of her psychological defense strategies, all those ways of operating in the world and with other people that supposedly kept her “safe” and “unhurt” but also numb. She was asked to see if she could actually live like that, and to her amazement, she found she could. So instead of feeling “broken down” she now felt “broken open.” No more armor. The secret of yoga, for her, she said, was the art of being tender and broken-open all the time. Armor doesn’t know the difference between love and hate, she said. When you defend against pain, you also armor against love.

“So what this means for you, Mom,” she said, “is that it’s okay to sit happily broken down on the side of the road, but if somebody stops, it’s also perfectly all right to accept a tow.”

Ah.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com

I recently spent some time traveling by airplane. Before take-off, the flight attendant always goes through that little song and dance that includes the following sentence: “If you are traveling with a small child, place your oxygen mask on first, and then assist the child.”

I always try to envision that. My kid, gasping for air, going blue, looking at me with terrified eyes, and me, grabbing my own air mask and putting it on first. I really can’t see myself doing that—putting my own mask on first.

Even though I understand the reasoning behind such advice, (that I am no help to anyone else unless my own situation is stable), still, it seems to go against all my instincts. It seems selfish that I get to breathe first.

So here it is, a few weeks before Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year. The hap, happiest time of the year. The season of giving. When you care enough to send the very best. When Peter comes home from college (for the 14^th year in a row) in the Folgers commercial and the whole machine of it is once again attempting to suck me into its vortex. A vortex aswirl in butter cookies and wrapping paper and One Day Only sales at Circuit City.

The plane is clearly going down. I feel the cabin pressure drop. There isn’t enough air. Only six shopping days left. Two masks fall from the overhead compartment. So now what do I do? Go shopping for those last few things on my list? Bake another batch of cookies? (My kid is turning blue. She’s gasping. She really needs that new game.) Or, do I put own my mask on first and go up to my room, close the door, and become quiet for a while.

Back before the swirling vortex of Christmas began I knew, without qualification, that nothing was more important than this period of quiet every day. Without this, I was just a character in somebody else’s video game, at the mercy of the cultural joystick, a soulless automaton. But if I spent some time alone everyday, breathing, writing, meditating, I could step out of the game and see it, and not be played by it.

But what is more, as a result of this period of self care and self nurturing I now had something to give to the crazed child, the demanding parent, the frazzled boss. Since I now could breathe fully and easily myself, I could help others don their own masks, or at the very least not add to the chaos.

So, if you want to, try this. Write down these six words on a piece of paper: Nothing Is More Important Than This. Then close your eyes and think about it. What is the one thing that when you do it, seems to give the rest of your day sweetness and balance, and when you let it get crowded out by the “shoulds” and the “oughts” you lose all sense of sanity and proportion and start to gasp for air, turn blue and get that terrified look in your eyes.

Possible answers could be your daily prayer or meditation, your daily walk, your morning alone time, or any personal ritual that grounds you, and gives you stability and ballast in your life.

Because if you are all used up and empty, how can you give anything to anyone else? When the “Nothing is more important than this” thing gets done each day, it is equivalent to putting on your oxygen mask first. Only then will you be able to share your gifts with others. Only then will you have any gifts to share.

Happy Christmas.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

The minute the tickets went on sale I was on them, tapping my credit card numbers into the website first thing that morning. They were expensive, these tickets, but hey, it was the Dalai Lama, and he was in Ithaca, close enough that I didn’t even need a hotel, so I splurged. His talk at Ithaca College was on “How to Train the Mind.” Perfect. My mind could use some training.

But then there was a snafu with the tickets. They didn’t come. I emailed the monastery. They sent them, they said. I didn’t get them, I said. Don’t worry, they said. Bring your invoice to the door.

On the day of the talk I got up and meditated. I dressed in Dalai Lama appropriate clothes, looped my mala beads around my wrist, and folded my invoice into my bag. I was a little worried about this lack of a physical “ticket.” What if I got there and they said, “Sorry.” What if I was turned away at the door to the Dalai Lama? Would I be able to accept it with an attitude of calmness and nonviolence and go home in peace? I wondered.

As I drove along Rt. 13 in the silent car, thinking calm, positive thoughts about the Dalai Lama, and life, I was startled by flashing red and blue lights behind me. A cop was pulling me over. Surely there was some mistake. But no. I tried to explain to Officer Sullivan that I was calm, centered, aware, driving conscientiously, carefully, in full control of my body, mind and emotions. Officer Sullivan said his laser had “pinpoint accuracy.” I got my first speeding ticket.

I drove the rest of the way to Ithaca blasting Krishna Das, wondering “What would the Dalai Lama do?” No answers were forthcoming.

But happy day, I got in with my invoice. My seat was great, with a clear view to the stage, his throne, and the chanting monks. Soon the Dalai Lama himself appeared. And that’s when everything began to tank. He spoke mostly in Tibetan. Through an interpreter. It sounded something like this. Dalai Lama: Geechy goo dzi pombo jo-jo. Loody sha-sha, tomee dah, ta sherra jie. Sher mona shera sheval, nay nay shera. (For 15 minutes.) Then the interpreter went on about “proofs” and “steps” and the 8 Magic Pathways and the 5 Treasures of this and that.

Suffice it to say, I did not learn how to train my mind. But I did learn a lot about irritation, frustration, boredom, sadness and anger as I sat there for two hours being ticked at the Dalai Lama for not meeting my expectations. And making me get a speeding ticket. And depriving me of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transcend my mind and feel uplifted, which I had paid good money to do.

It was only the next day, as I was mulling over the whole disappointing experience, that I remembered how tired the Dalai Lama looked, sitting up on his throne, bored, while his interpreter droned on. I remembered how he dug out a little visor and put it on his head to shield his eyes from the harsh lights that were trained on him. I thought about his age, 72, and how this had been his third talk in two days and how he must have been pooped. I thought about how hard it must be to be the Dalai Lama with everyone always expecting you to say brilliant and inspiring things all the time.

Then I thought about Officer Sullivan, sitting in his patrol car in a clump of weeds somewhere, with his pinpoint accurate laser, and his whole grab bag of human troubles, doing a job where people either feared him or hated him, but doing a job that needed to be done. And I knew then that we were all the same: me, the Dalai Lama and Officer Sullivan. All we want is to be seen, loved, accepted and appreciated. And all we want is to be cut some slack when we disappoint.

So I forgave the Dalai Lama and Officer Sullivan that day. Because really, we are all just doing the best we can with what we have. Me included.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com

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Last summer, in the midst of a period of feeling unsettled and disconnected, I bought a djembe. I found myself wandering around Toko Imports, a drum store in Ithaca, NY looking for a drum. I had no idea what kind of drum I wanted, but as I told the owner, I just “needed a drum.”

As these words spilled out of my mouth they surprised me. “I NEED a drum???” Did I say “need”?

I have never before needed a drum, wanted a drum, played a drum. Drums are loud. Hell, drums are percussive and I prefer meditative. Not to mention the fact that I have a quirky, some would even say unconventional, sense of rhythm. My piano teacher, in a fit of exasperation, once had me march around her studio clicking two sticks together saying out loud, “A one, and a two, and a three, and a four. A one, and a two, and a three, and a four.” And I was 45 years old at the time.

“What kind of drum do you need?” Tom, the owner, asked.

“I don’t know.” I confessed.

He looked at me. “Here’s what you need,” and he went to the back of the store and produced a drum with a beautiful carved wooden base, about two feet tall.

“This is a djembe (pronounced “gem bay”),” he said. “It’s an African drum.”

Tom then explained the difference between African drums and Latin drums.

“The Africans believe that the heartbeat of the earth is brought up through the drum by the drummer’s hands. That’s why the movements of the drummer’s hands pop up off the drum into the air,” he explained.

“Latin drummers believe the heartbeat of the universe is pulled down into the drum through the drummer’s hands. That’s why Latin drumming is done with hands close to the drum head.”

He illustrated these techniques first on the djembe, and then on a conga. I was entranced.

Another customer entered at that point and Tom left me, saying, “There are many djembes here of this size. The drum heads are made of goat hide. Go find your goat. You will know it.”

I walked tentatively along the row of djembes. I touched them all. I didn’t pound them, I “petted” them. Some skins were mottled, others flawlessly white. Some even had goat fur around their edges.

I kept coming back to one. It was soft, with a little brown stripe down the center. My hands liked it. My heart liked it. This was my goat.

Tom returned. “Find it?”

“Yes. It’s this one.’

He played a riff of beats on it. “This is a good one.”

He took my picture with a Polaroid, holding my goat. Everyone who has ever bought a drum there has their picture hanging on the wall.

Back home I began to play it. Tentatively at first, but I soon learned the bass, the tone and the slap. When I played my drum I became calm. It seemed to put my head in sync with my heart and my heart in sync with the pulse of the day.

As I continue to play, I notice I gravitate toward the same rhythm all the time (much to the extreme annoyance of anyone within earshot) but it seems natural, this rhythm, and intuitive, and distinctly mine It’s like I’ve always known it, always had it in me somehow. I recall what Tom said about how the drummer’s hands pull the rhythm out of the earth through the drum, and I wonder if I’ve somehow managed to tap into my own private artesian well of beats, my own personal rhythm.

Now, a year later, I finally get why I needed this drum. Playing my drum settles me down, grounds me, entrains my heartbeat with the rhythmic pulse of everything around me. It allows me to get down with my bad self, jam with it, rock out with it. When I play it I feel like I’m part of the band, part of the tribe.

And I am.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

I don’t work. People ask me on Mondays, “How was your weekend?” I just shrug. I don’t distinguish between “weekend” and “week”. It’s all the same to me. I don’t have a day “off” because I don’t have a day “on.” That’s because I don’t work.

I hate work. As soon as it becomes work, I don’t do it. Some people think I’m a spoiled brat. Others think I have found the secret to human happiness. Let me explain.

I have a job. I get paid for what I do. Under “Occupation” on forms, I know what to write. I pay income tax because I have an income, but I don’t for a moment think of what I do as “work.” Work implies “hard.” Work implies there might be suffering involved. Work is not voluntary. Work has a nasty “have to go to it” side. Some work even has a dress code involving neckties and pantyhose. Work has “business hours” and “overtime.” But the most dreadful feature of work is that it is not fun. Because if work was fun, we wouldn’t call it work, would we? No. We’d call it fishing or bowling or in my case, teaching yoga. That’s why I don’t work.

I used to work, though. That’s why I know so much about it. It’s also why I refuse to do it. And it’s not because I am a spoiled brat. It’s because I am going to die. Hopefully not soon, but eventually it will happen. And I don’t want to lie on my deathbed thinking that I spent my entire “working” life doing stuff I hated, stuff that felt like torture, hardship and suffering. Instead, I want to die feeling I played with and used up the whole toy box of skills I was born with, with joyful abandon.

Oprah writes a column in her magazine called, “What I Know For Sure.” I don’t claim to know this “for sure” but here is what I believe. I believe that everyone is born with a mission, a “vocation” if you will. This mission is implanted inside us like a computer chip. When we are doing jobs we love, we feel happy. When we feel happy, that’s the tip-off that we are in sync with our mission.

But when we suffer in jobs we hate, our chip starts to beep. It goes: “Beep! Beep! Beep! Unhappiness Alert! Change direction! Path Error!” When we hear this alert, which doesn’t always sound like a beep, but sometimes shows up as an intense feeling of nausea and dread at the thought of going to work, we must pay attention to it or risk spreading “unhappiness toxins” all over the place.

Think of it. If you teach and love to teach, your students feel it and they’re happy. If you are a lawyer and love seeing justice served, your clients and society are happy. If you make widgets and believe in the benefits of your widget, widget users everywhere are happy.

But if you hate what you do, you spread dissatisfaction and grouchiness and badly made products out into the world. Everybody who comes into contact with you, and the product of your work suffers.

So what I am saying is this: we must all stop working. Instead, we have a duty as human beings who will die someday, to find our mission, what we were put here to do, and then do it. When we find our thing we’ll know it because it will make us feel satisfied and worthwhile and happy to get up in the morning. It will intrigue and absorb us. On most days, it will almost feel like fun. If you find this thing and do it, some people may call you a spoiled brat. But then again, others may call you “enlightened.”

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

“I’ve been so busy lately. Incredibly busy. Insanely busy. That’s why I haven’t called you. Or stopped over. You’ve been busy, too? Yeah, I know. I thought once summer got here I’d have more time to read a book maybe, or float around on the lake, or just chill. But no. I’ve been too busy.”

I heard myself say this the other day and I was appalled. “Do you hear yourself? I said to myself. “What’s up with all this “busy” stuff? I suddenly felt that “busy” was such a lie, such a cop-out, such a stupid way to live, not to mention a totally inaccurate way to describe how I actually live my life.

But it just tumbled out of my mouth. Everybody says it. It’s the default response to the question, “How have you been?” I wondered what would happen if I were no longer allowed to say “busy.” What if “busy” was banned forever from my vocabulary? Could I say, “Well, I have been so involved in my work, and with my family, that many other social interactions have fallen away lately. I have missed you though, and I am really enjoying seeing you now.”?

Could I say that? That’s more accurate, certainly, but not as big and important-sounding and virtuous and productivity-oriented as, “I’ve been so busy.” “Busy” implies I’m getting things done, working hard, or at the very least, keeping my hands out of use as the devil’s workshop.

But what if I had a lot of things to do in a very short amount of time? Wouldn’t I then be justified in claiming to be “busy?” How, I wondered, could I do a lot of things in a short amount of time and not be “busy?” Could I manage the shopping and the bill-paying and the laundry and the dishes without wishing they’d be over with quickly so I could move on to the next, and much more crucial thing on my list? Could I simply do one thing at a time without worrying or even thinking about the next thing? Because if I could, that would be the cure for “busy.”

Winston Churchill defined history as, “Just one damned thing after another,” and this seems to me the quintessential Zen way of looking at what really happens in time. Why do we have to label ourselves “busy”? Why can’t we just be really into what we are doing? Life can only be lived one “now” moment after another, anyway.

Even beavers, who are the archetypes, (along with bees), of “busyness” aren’t really “busy.” They simply drag sticks and branches through the water all day. They just make dams. They’re not too damned busy.

But the Now moment is boring, we think. We don’t want to live there, we say. Now is so over. We want “next”-- the next thing, the next episode, the next shiny gadget. We’re already waiting for iPhone 2.0.

It’s like we’re always rushing to get there, but the “there” keeps moving. It’s like teasing a cat with a piece of string. The cat grabs for the string and you keep pulling it out of reach. Again and again. But eventually the cat gets bored with the game and takes a nap. (Cats are clearly smarter than we are.) We keep playing this dumb game of “next” our whole lives. We never live in the moment; we’re totally entranced with the string.

So what’s so wrong with that? Well, for one thing, we could wind up missing stuff. Like our lives. Or just today. If I had been “busy,” this morning, for instance, I might have missed the cedar waxwing in the viburnum. I would not have noticed the scent of hay in the cool morning air. I most surely would have overlooked the new flowers on the purple violet over the kitchen sink, and not even heard the crickets.

So, vowing never again to be “busy,” I finished my coffee, made my list for the day, and walked outside. I noticed immediately that the phlox along the driveway didn’t have a list. Thinking it might be onto something, I leaned in close and whispered, “How have you been?” It just nodded and swayed in the breeze. And twinkled pink.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

It is 3 P.M and I am roaming the kitchen looking for something. Something to eat maybe. I am not hungry, just “nudgy.” Not nudgy for food necessarily, just restless. Or maybe tired. Or bored. But it is 3 P.M. and I have now opened and closed all the cabinet doors, rejected dates and stoned wheat crackers and chocolate pudding and organic chicken noodle soup.

I have also rejected cereal and popcorn and almonds and all things in boxes that need to be “prepared.” I do not want to prepare. I don’t know what I want, but something has moved me into the kitchen. I feel like I am playing “Hot-Cold” and I am “Freeeeezing.”

But like I said, it’s 3 P.M., the time of day when my biorhythms hit bottom. I do not even have to look at the clock to know it is 3 P.M. and in fact, I haven’t looked at the clock. “It” is not 3 P.M., “I” am 3 P.M. And it is early summer and I am in my kitchen looking through the refrigerator. I don’t want milk. I don’t want cheese. I don’t want anything in here. I open the freezer. I shut it immediately.

I look at the appliances. I do not want toast. I don’t think I can handle the sound of the juicer or the blender right now, because right now there is no sound in the house except for a bird chirping outside and the drone of a distant lawn mower.

I think I want sweet. But what? An apple? A banana? I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I’m just nudgy. Tea. Maybe I’ll boil water and make tea. I stand at the sink, looking out while the water heats. There is a small bird at the feeder. It’s yellow. A warbler? A finch? It looks delicious. I contemplate a little finch sandwich, with mustard, on rye toast. Yes.

But no.

The kettle starts to whistle. I pour the boiling water over the bag and take my cup to the porch. There is a little wind blowing and a male redwing blackbird is “oak-a’lee”ing in the maple. Too big for a sandwich, I think. Probably tough, too, and would require a large roll rather than a thin piece of toasted rye.

The tea does not satisfy. Why is it I always want a cookie with tea? No cookies in the house, though. Just as well. But still, I nudge.

I am hungry, but not physically. On a scale of 1 to 6 with 1 being “Not hungry at all” and 6 being “Ready to pass out” my physical hunger is maybe a 2.

I roam the yard, looking for whatever will satisfy me at 3 P.M. on an early summer day that won’t involve eating a finch. The tea cup warms my hand, a little breeze blows, I get goose bumps.

I return to the kitchen and open the cabinet under the sink. I wish Windex were drinkable because I need something blue. “Getting warmer” says the chorus in my head that is still playing “Hot-Cold.”

OK. Blue. I want something blue, but not necessarily to eat or ingest. I migrate back to the porch. The sky is blue. OK. Nothing there, though.

But wait, maybe that’s what I want. Not the sky, but nothing. A big nothing. A lot of nothing. A considerable amount of perfectly prepared nothing. A little nothing on rye toast. Some nothing with a redwing blackbird, a maple tree, and tea.

I sit down in the chaise, put my teacup on the floor, kick back and absorb the nothing. The nothing of the sky, the nothing of the day, the nothing of my body, the nothing of my kitchen, the nothing of 3 P.M. “Hot! Hot! Hot!” screams the chorus in my head, still playing “Hot Cold.”

Hot. Hot. Hot.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

There is a saying that goes, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” This certainly doesn’t sound very enlightened, and whoah, the killing part? Not nice at all. But the explanation of this koan is that if you try to single out one person as “The Buddha” you have missed the point. Being a “Buddha” simply means being “awake” and being “awake” means being present, and being ‘present” entails acting with kindness and compassion. So anyone, and indeed everyone, can achieve “Buddhahood.”

A few years ago I was frantically cleaning my basement. I was in a snit about it, too. I didn’t want to do it. It was messy and dirty and frustrating. But I was doing it, okay?? In the middle of the job, I realized I needed a ladder to get boxes up onto a high shelf, and I didn’t have one. Angry and frustrated that I had to break my Tasmanian Devil momentum, I drove to Wal-Mart. Standing in the ladder section, dirty and grouchy, weighing the merits of metal versus wood, a store employee approached and asked if he could be of help.

I told him my dilemma and he patiently explained the advantages of wood and metal ladders, got one down, placed it in my cart, squired me to the register, asked if I needed help to my car, and assured me that the basement project would be a great success.

As I drove back home with my ladder (wood), I noticed that I was smiling. I felt calm and optimistic and, dare I even admit it? Happy. I realized that I had been in the presence of a little Buddha masquerading as a ladder salesman at Wal-Mart. He was kind and patient and he treated me as a human being rather than a customer, and as a result of our brief time together I was changed. Maybe not for long, and maybe not forever, but back in my dirty basement I now worked calmly and methodically and the project was indeed a big success.

The next day I returned to Wal-Mart and went to the Customer Service desk and tried to explain to them that I had had an enlightenment experience in the ladder aisle in the presence of a little Buddha who happened to be their employee. They just smiled and nodded as they would to any insane person, and sent me on my way.

But here’s the thing. There are little Buddhas everywhere. People who, just by the way they do their jobs, are transforming the world, one dirty, grouchy person at a time. And it doesn’t matter what they do. I have met little Buddhas masquerading as waitresses and auto mechanics and contractors and bartenders and high school maintenance workers. There is the store clerk who remembers my name, and the other one who doesn’t, but remembers a conversation we once had. There is the waitress who is unfailingly cheerful and whenever I am lucky enough to sit in her section, I come away feeling nourished in a way that has nothing to do with the food.

I come away from my encounters with these little Buddhas feeling charged up, lit up, energized, inspired and sometimes even blessed. For a while, back in my basement, I thought seriously and long about going into the ladder selling business. But then I realized that any job could be done with awareness and compassion and kindness. I realized that even grouchy old me could be a Buddha if I would only wake up, pay attention, stay present and most of all, be kind.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

It’s time to clean house. Time to get rid of old stuff and make room for new. My closets and garage are the least of it. Here is what I really need to say goodbye to.

I need to say goodbye to old, outgrown, inappropriate conceptions of myself, selves that were true at one time (maybe), but no longer have any use. Goodbye scared child sniveling under the blanket. Goodbye thumb-sucker, approval junkie, good daughter, straight-A student, prom queen, cheerleader, employee of the week.

Goodbye also to clothes that don’t fit or never did, confining uniforms of all sorts: catholic schoolgirl uniforms, waitress uniforms, corporate executive uniforms, teacher uniforms, mommy uniforms. Goodbye knees socks, aprons, pumps, pantyhose, bronzer, eyeliner, two coats of mascara. Goodbye “Hello My Name Is _____” stickers.

Goodbye to boring people, mean people, inconsiderate people, arrogant people, people who don’t use their turn signal, people who don’t play fair. May you be happy, may you be peaceful, may you be free, but may you play your own game in your own playground.

Goodbye to “should.” Should is a cramped cage with iron bars. If you kept your dog in one you’d be fined for cruelty. Goodbye To-Do Lists and deadlines and things I agreed to because I thought I “should” but never wanted to in the first place. Goodbye to people pleasing and insincerity and inauthenticity of all kinds. Goodbye to nods of understanding when I haven’t the slightest idea what you are feeling or experiencing.

Goodbye to time: clock time, calendar time, deadlines, automatic updates. Goodbye to bedtime, time to wake up, time to do the laundry, the dishes, the taxes.

Goodbye to leashes and collars and belts and neckties and zippers and laces and buttons. Goodbye to all ties that bind.

Goodbye to coats and gloves and socks and long underwear. Goodbye to heated rooms and humidifiers and cough drops and Tylenol. Goodbye to wool (smart and dumb).

Goodbye to fear: fear of success, fear of failure, fear of scarcity, fear of abundance, fear of death and injury and cancer and black ice and drunk drivers and food additives and snakes.

Goodbye to all that.

Hello to big, vast, unlimited Self. Self with a capital “S.” Hello to that vast sea of elastic time where my unlimited Self can do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. Hello to the divine wisdom that guides that big Self from inside. Hello to trusting the internal GPS. A big hello to that.

Hello to the “Things I WANT to Do Today” List. Hello to doing it. Hello to the philosophy of, “If it’s not fun, it’s not done.”

. Hello to brave self, brash self, sassy self, courageous self, bad self, C-student, class clown, queen of detention.

Hello to socks that don’t match, soft clothes, wild shoes, painted toenails, and loud ties. Hello to bare feet in inappropriate places. Hello to gratitude and thank you notes and smiles for no reason. Hello to calling in “well.”

Hello to sincere, real people. People who laugh too loud and cry in public and glitter when they walk. Hello to people who are unafraid to show exactly who they are without excuses.

Hello to playing this life as a wondrous, magical game where the big vast unlimited Self makes the rules and decides how to play. Hello to all and everyone who plays: people of faith, people of no faith, lovers of the grand paradox, writers, meditators, bartenders, teachers, yogis, readers, dreamers, nature lovers, the soft and the silent, the loud and the bold, the free and the fearless.

Hello to Game of Life players everywhere who are playing Kindness Games and Generosity Games and Learning Games and Peaceful Games and Laughter Games in this timeless and wacky playground.

Hello to all that.

Hello to spring.

I am amazed sometimes at the things I’ve never done. Seems I’ve managed to get through 54 years without playing The Game of Life. “Life” the board game, that is, not “life” as in breathing, eating, relating, loving, laughing, playing, crying, etc.

So I sat down with a friend and played The Game of Life (according to Milton Bradley) the other day.

“This is a joke, right?” I asked as she set up the bank and we picked out little plastic cars that would take us through “life.” “It’s meant to be ironic, right?”

“I dunno,” she said as she, the banker, sold me a house, let me pick a career, buy insurance and stock, and pay taxes.

“So, how do you win? I asked.

“After you get to the Retirement space you have no moves left,” she began.

“What?!! After you retire there are no moves left? Well, that’s depressing,” I said. “What if you retire early, say at 54? (I was beginning to take this personally.) What if you want to go in a whole new direction now? Start a new career? Begin a new life?”

“No,” she said emphatically. “No moves left after retirement.” “In addition, you have to wait until everyone else retires before the game can be decided.”

“Well, this is boring.” I said. “I have to just sit here and watch while you move your car around the board?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Stop complaining.”

“Don’t I even get a rocking chair and a glass for my dentures?”

“Shut up,” she said.

“If you think you have the most money and the most stuff you can retire to Millionaire Acres, if not, then you have to go to Countryside Acres.”

“So are you saying that retiring to the Country is the less attractive retirement option? What if I don’t want to retire to a mansion and would prefer a little house in the country with solar panels and composting toilets and an organic garden?”

“I’m really sorry I agreed to play this game with you,” she said.

“But really,” I insisted, “What if all my money and my stocks and my career as an Entertainer don’t mean a hill of beans to me? What if all I want to do is practice yoga and live in the country and raise baby carrots and go kayaking and mountain climbing and visit India and play Fur Elise on the piano?”

“That’s not an option in this game,” she said. “Spin.”

“I don’t want to spin!” I said. “This is a really stupid game.”

“Game” is the operative word here,” she said. What you seem to want to do is play your own game.”

“Bingo!” I said

“You wanna play bingo? she asked.

“No! I want to play my own game of life, not this one. This one is NO life. This one is the antithesis of life. This game is hell.

“Hate to break it to you, but this is the predominate game of our culture,” she said. “Life is a career and money and a house and stocks and insurance and taxes and retiring to Millionaire Acres.”

“Spin,” she said. “Let’s see who wins.”

“I need a glass of wine first,” I said.

“That won’t change anything, you know,” she said.

“I know.”

“We don’t have to play the Game of Life if you don’t want to,” she said.

“Good,” I said, “because I hate this game.”

“Me too,” she said.

“Let’s play our own game,” I said.

“Good idea,” she said.

“Spin.”

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Some readers thought I was a little Scroogey back in December when I dissed Christmas, so in an attempt to redeem myself, this month I am declaring, without qualification, that I am a huge fan of Groundhog Day.

Every year when I flip the calendar from January to February and see “Groundhog Day” written in that little box under February 2^nd, I crack up. I wonder what a space alien, coming upon our calendar, might think about this Groundhog Day holiday. What is commemorated on Groundhog Day? Are groundhogs honored? Will there be a parade, a ceremony, some observance? Will there be pictures of groundhogs displayed on public buildings? What exactly happens on Groundhog Day?

Of course, everyone knows what happens on Groundhog Day. And everyone knows what doesn’t happen. And it is what doesn’t happen that thrills me the most about Groundhog Day.

I don’t have to shop for it, for one thing, which is a blessed relief. I don’t have to find the perfect Groundhog Day gift for everyone on my list because there is no list.

I don’t have to wonder what to make for Groundhog Day dinner and I don’t have to worry about who might be eating alone on Groundhog Day and should I invite them.

I don’t have to get a tree or hang lights all over my house (though the thought of brown icicle lights hanging from roof eaves is kinda funny—but no.) Don’t start, people. Really. Don’t.

I don’t have to send cards or buy my daughter an airline ticket home so she can spend Groundhog Day with the family.

I don’t have to listen to endless Groundhog Day songs piped through the sound systems of every store in town.

I don’t have to get aggravated with retailers who “push” the holiday. I don’t have to walk through the store grumbling, “They no sooner pack up all the Christmas stuff than the Groundhog Day stuff is all over the place!.”

The liquor store is open on Groundhog Day. So are the post office and the bank. All the schools are in session. There is no parade, no special prayers to say, or candles to light, or cemeteries to visit.

What does happen on Groundhog Day is this: When I wake up in the morning and realize it is indeed Groundhog Day, I rush to the TV. If I’ve made it in time, I get to see two men in top hats lifting up a fat, shiny, impeccably groomed groundhog by the scruff of its neck. They plant a big kiss on its lips and declare (96% of the time) that the groundhog has seen his shadow and therefore there will be six more weeks of winter.

The crowd in Punxatawney goes wild. I go wild. It’s a great day. A great moment. A deeply atavistic, primal moment when I remember that I too, am a creature of the earth. That I too, have been hibernating for some time (albeit maybe only in the deep, dark recesses of my own day-to-day drama) and that now, maybe, it’s time to wake up and peek out. Maybe it’s time to start noticing the day, and how there is a new quality of light slanting through the window. Maybe now it’s time to look up and actively, consciously, notice the sky.

Groundhog Day signals the halfway point between the first day of winter and the first day of spring, so maybe it’s also time to start looking at the ground again. Not for groundhogs, but maybe for a snowdrop, or a crocus. Maybe it’s time, finally, to wake up out of my solipsistic daydream and notice the first robin, or that long rosary of geese making its way north again after the long dream of winter. Maybe it’s time to sit outside in my parka, my back to the late winter sun, and contemplate my own shadow.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.

When I first learned to cross-country ski I was taken to the Darling Run trailhead. There, along the rails-to-trails path, a blessed being in a snowmobile had broken a trail. There it was, mile after mile of perfectly tracked snow. All I had to do was drop my skis into the pre-made tracks, push off with my right foot, glide for a bit, and then push off again with my left foot. Kick. Glide. Kick. Glide. It was effortless. And mindless. I didn’t have to think of where I was going. I was going wherever the tracks led.

Sometimes though, in a moment of distraction, my skis would jump the tracks and I would find myself stuck in deep, resistant snow. Forward motion was no longer possible without great effort. Better to stop and maneuver the skis back into the pre-made tracks. And even though sometimes it seemed as if the pre-made tracks didn’t exactly conform to my particular body proportions, it was far easier to conform than to make my own, new tracks.

In yoga there is a word for these pre-made tracks. The word is samskara. A samskara is any habitual pattern or way of doing something that requires no thought. It is the mind on automatic pilot. It frequently shows up for me when I am heading to the store only to find myself halfway home because I just dropped into my usual, rutted pattern of right and left hand turns, not thinking.

Samskaras are deeply comfortable patterns that allow us to let go of thinking and just enjoy the ride. The only problem with them comes when we no longer want to go to the place the tracks lead to. When that happens, we realize we have to get off the tracks and break trail ourselves, and this is arduous and exhausting.

A New Year’s resolution is really not a resolution, but more of a realization. A realization—sometimes sudden, sometimes deeply known but stuffed down inside, that the old, comfortable tracks aren’t taking me where I want to go. Maybe I don’t even know where I want to go, but I know for sure that these tracks aren’t getting me there. And it is in this spacious and clear moment, that I make the decision to set out upon the vast expanse of trackless snow.

I know the work will be arduous at first, and exhausting. I won’t get very far. I will have to stop often and breathe. And the world will have to stop too, and breathe with me. And each day, at my point of exhaustion, I will recognize that I have made enough of an effort for today. But when I turn around, I find the way back on the tracked snow is much easier. I suddenly realize that because of my efforts today, tomorrow I will be able to come at least this far on today’s tracks before having to break new trail. And in this way, little by little, day by day, I will get where I want to go. In my own self-made, consciously-made, tracks. Kick. Glide. Kick. Glide.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email at mainstreetyoga@gmail.com

It’s not that I don’t like Christmas… Ok, scratch that. I don’t like Christmas. Christmas makes me feel like a hostage held at gunpoint, forced to do and say things I don’t mean: “Got all your shopping done? All ready for Christmas?” Arrrghhh! NO! I am NOT ready for Christmas! I don’t even know what being “ready for Christmas” means. I know what being ready for a tornado means, or a hurricane, or some foreseeable natural disaster. Which is pretty much the way I feel about Christmas: it’s that natural disaster that happens every December. Christmas makes me want to board up the windows, stock up on canned goods and wait it out in the basement.

But to be fair, there are some things I like about Christmas. I like the lights. I like the bizarre ritual of bringing a cold, sappy pine tree into the house and watching the reactions of my pets: Yesssss!! Finally! Indoor plumbing! I like votive candles and cradling a hot spicy drink with a cinnamon stick in it and blowing into it before sipping. I like looking out at snow and having no where to go. I like a fireplace and the smell of wood smoke in the air when I walk outside. I like baking cookies and then eating cookies.

But it seems to me that I don’t need “Christmas” to do these things. What I think I need are some new holidays, holidays that are personally meaningful and that haven’t gotten all gunked up with wrapping paper and over-spending and obligations So here are a few of my proposals.. Please feel free to add your own and write me with your ideas. I really think we need to get this going.

No Clocks Day. People across the country abandon their watches, cover all visible clocks, and turn off anything that chimes the hour. This is the day that everyone is free to follow their own biorthythms: wake up when they’re finished sleeping; leave work when they’re finished working; eat when they’re hungry and not because it’s lunch time. People can do what they feel like doing when they feel like doing it, and not because it’s “time.”

Watching Hawks Day. This is held on the first beautiful day in spring.. All businesses close and people take blankets out into open fields and spend the entire day lying around, watching hawks ride the thermals.

Scar Day. On this day, people all across the country get together to talk about and show each other their scars. They bring food and sit around in little circles and tell the stories of how they were injured and how they healed. Then they eat the food and cry and laugh.

Unapologetically Incompetent Day. The motto for this day is: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. This is the day when we don’t have to apologize for not being perfect. If we take 15 minutes to parallel park and still jump the curb? So what. If we can’t balance the checkbook? So what. If our parenting skills have landed our kids in therapy? So what. If we haven’t had a date since the turn of the millennium? So what? So what. So what. So what. . (We may need more than one day for this one.)

Dog Day. To assuage the growing epidemic of “dog guilt” everyone can stay home and play with their dog on this day. We can play “stick” and “ball” and “chase” and go on long walks—preferably off-lead.

Warm Socks Day. December 1^st. On this day we appreciate that it’s the little things, like warm socks, that can have the biggest impact on our lives. We celebrate by wearing our craziest socks and giving a pair of warm socks to our loved ones or to anyone who may need them. Businesses all over town participate by putting out “sock bins” where people can donate socks and anyone who needs a pair can take them.

Oh boy, look at the time! Unfortunately, today isn’t No Clocks Day and I’ve gotta run. I’m not even close to being ready for Christmas.

I think my mother always wanted to be June Cleaver. She wanted Ward to take care of the Beav while she flounced around in a shirtwaist, baked bread and vacuumed the house in heels. But instead, she found herself in her early 30s, widowed, with two kids to support. Flouncing was out, needless to say, and breadwinning soon replaced bread baking.

My mother never really liked to cook anyway, so that was the first chore to go when she went to work. My sister and I grew up on Instant Breakfast, deli meat, and Swanson TV dinners. We never ate anything that had to be peeled or chopped.

But every year as Thanksgiving approached, we’d find her sitting at the table cutting complicated recipes out of Good Housekeeping magazine. I think she saw Thanksgiving dinner as her personal “Day of Atonement,” the day when she would do penance for what she saw as her “Sins of Culinary Neglect.” She’d always invite a ton of people to this event too: people from work, the lady next door and her no-good son-in-law, and my bachelor Uncle Jimmy.

A few days before the big day, my sister and I would help her unload stuff from the car the likes of which we never saw the rest of the year: bunches of carrots with the greens still on the ends, squashes of all colors and shapes, shallots (whatever they were) and other pieces of exotic produce. Out came cans of black olives, jars of marinated artichoke hearts and tall glass cylinders of tiny pearl onions. And a turkey the size of a Studebaker.

As the guests arrived, everyone would offer to help and everyone would be told the same thing: “The best way to help is to stay out of the kitchen.” I’d put out the olives, freshen the drinks and sit in front of the football game. As dinnertime drew closer, the sounds from the kitchen grew more ominous. What started as a barely audible curse, turned into louder and more colorful strings of them. Little bumps and thumps turned into polyphonic crashes. The sounds ended abruptly with the 25 lb turkey hurtling through the air, across the expanse of the dining room, before crashing into the wall, drippings splashing. My mother exploded out of the kitchen, grabbed her coat and car keys on the run and squealed out of the driveway.

My sister and I, the people from work, the lady from next door, the no-good son-in-law and Uncle Jimmy sat in stunned silence. My sister and I got up first, then everyone pitched in and we cleaned up the mess. They left, dinnerless, and my sister and I ate a turkey TV dinner and went to bed.

My mother has been dead for some years now, and I have had quite a few Thanksgivings where no one has had a nervous breakdown. But every year at this time of year, I think about how crazy and crazed the holidays make me, make a lot of people. I think about all the empty rituals I do just because I think I should, or because I always have, or because I have internalized some media image of what I should be doing this time of year, regardless of whether or not it meets any real personal need. I need to free myself of the tyranny of the turkey, the coercion of Christmas cards, the dictatorship of decorating. I need to break free and make new, meaningful personal rituals.

Sometimes I wish my mother had just ripped up the complicated recipes and thrown them against the wall. Now that would have made a great family tradition. One I would have gladly carried on.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email at mainstreetyoga@gmail.com