Re-connections and Yogi Advent

 Hello all,

I can’t believe how much time has passed since my last update!  Good gracious!   

The past couple months have been full of "re-connections."  At the end of October, I met up with friends from both high school and college with a spontaneous trip to New York City.  I survived an epic bus ride through the blizzard and met up with Kristine at Penn Station. Like true Michiganders, Kristine and I trekked to Times Square and the Highline despite the falling snow and inches of slush on the sidewalks.  Later that evening Kristine and I joined Steve and Jeff and enjoyed a beautiful performance by the Hillary Reynolds Band (they just released an album—check out their website!)

In November, the re-connections continued with my former roommate Emily.  Emily works for a software consulting company in Chicago, but she was assigned to work with a client in DC.  The fabulous result: Emily now spends Monday-Friday in the District every week!  So far we have met up once a week after work, eaten fun Peruvian and Thai dinners, indulged in chocolate treats, and spent hours exploring the neighborhoods of DC.  Spending time with Emily feels like home.  I love seeing her, and it’s wonderful to find (and create) home here in DC.

Although DC is finding its way into my heart, I will always relish returning to my first home--Michigan.  I flew home for Thanksgiving this year and had another set of wonderful re-connections.  During my visit, I gathered briefly with the “Sophisticats” (a group of high school friends) and met some of my U of M friends for sweet potato pancakes in Detroit.  I also shared a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with my Snyder relatives on Thursday and then celebrated my grandparents’ 80^th birthdays with Snyder and Sheffield relatives on Saturday.  The Snyder family has so many things to celebrate this year: my cousin Ben won an engineering competition sponsored by Stryker (his WMU team beat several Big Ten schools—including my alma mater!), my aunt was selected to direct the Grand Rapids Sweet Adelines chorus (an acclaimed women’s barbershop chorus), my (almost) cousin Sara just received her associates degree, my sister SarahLiz has become quite a long distance runner (and is looking fabulous!), and I am so grateful that my grandparents are so happy and healthy as they enter their 80^th years of life.

Thanksgiving came and went so quickly this year.  It was wonderful, but between the reunions and travel, I didn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on gratitude or getting into the holiday spirit.  So I have a new project for December, which I have decided to call “Yogi Advent.”  Loosely based on my sparse knowledge of Christianity’s advent, my Yogi Advent will focus on four Christmas-y themes during these four weeks preceding Christmas.  Maybe this is kind of hokey, but I want to dedicate my yoga practice to each week’s theme and journal to further explore and embrace how it fits in my life.

This week I am focusing on Joy. 

Joy is defined (by various online dictionaries) as the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune, or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. 

Joy is delight: extreme satisfaction, bliss: perfect happiness, and gaiety: light-heartedness, merriment, and vivacity.

Joy is feeling rich with the gifts you already have, joy is laughing out loud, joy is colorful and playful, joy is uninhibited song and dance.

I would love to share my “Yogi Advent” with all of you, if you’ll humor me. Please share (post a comment!): How do you define joy? What brings you joy? Any poems, songs, YouTube clips or pictures? I plan to post more of my own reflections on joy later this week.

Sending love--and joy!

C#