Archive for month: January, 2013

All weekend I”ve been thinking about something that happened on Saturday just outside my studio. It”s really not any big deal, and I ma

y have just let it slide away barely noticed had it not been for the deep and palpable sense of satisfaction and gratitude it gave me.

24 hours earlier…

Fridays are a big teaching day for me, one of the only days I teach during the week, so I see a lot of students. At this point in my teaching my students consist primarily of those who have been with me for many, many years or who I”ve created significant bonds with. Needless to say, it”s a wonderfully rich, if not intense, day.

Some of these students I know their personal stories, I”ve worked with them outside of the studio or in different capacities. Some of them

I”ve seen through injuries, the loss of a parents (or parents), the loss of a job or relationship, pain, illness, and all the good stuff too like getting out of pain, running marathons, changing their diet, quiting smoking, becoming grandparents, and through pregnancies (multiple). The are dear to me.

My students came and went as usual that day and teaching felt good. My students left feeling better than when they walked in and I left feeling lit up by that sense of aliveness that comes from what teaching demands: moment-to-moment attention.

I go back to the studio on Saturday to teach for three hours and this past Saturday I did just that. I left around 12:45 to go distribute some fliers for a new (awesome) student-teacher run program we have starting this coming week. As I was crossing the street, almost to the other side, I saw one of my Friday regulars. “Hello, Patty! What are you up to?” (I love this gal and I always love seeing my students out and about.)

“Oh, I lost my mitten,” she says looking longingly at her one mitten. It”s cold, so mitten management is crucial. She describes how she thinks she dropped it when she was downtown just a bit earlier. Where were you, I ask. Can I help you look?

“No, I”ve already retraced my steps and am on my way home.” Sad face with a smile. Okay, well, I”m sorry about your mitten. Have a nice rest of your day.

We walk on. I really do love seeing my students around town. It always puts a little spring in my step. It”s kind of like seeing something you helped to create and feel proud of walking around on two feet – like walking proof that you do something good in the world.

Anyway… I walked across the parking lot to the market and stopped dead when I saw a single mitten sticking up from the corner of a sign just outside the market doors. The MITTEN!

I grabbed it, turned and ran. Patty? Patty? Where”d she go?

“PATTY!” I shouted across the street into the plaza where she was making her way toward home. “PATTY!”

And then I start waving the mitten like a lunatic. “You”re mitten!” I shout.

Now here is the real treat: the look on her face!!! It was like I had just presented a 5-year-old with a brand new puppy. I don”t know when I”ve seen so much totally pleasure on someone”s face and that it was all about a little lost mitten just made me giddy!

(In this moment we walked toward each other, her beaming, me waving the mitten ridiculously, like that scene in “You”ve Got Mail” at the end where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan see each other in the park for the first time… Oh, geeze, it was so, so wonderfully cheezy !)

So, she gets to the other side of the cross walk and is just grinning ear to ear, laughing, giggling and kind of shaking her head. “Wher

e did you find it?” I tell her and add that it”s kind of funny because if I hand”t seen her only a minute before I”d probably just ignored the mitten and thought it was a bummer that someone lost their glove. But…I didn”t ignore it and I did know who it belonged to!

She continued to laugh and shake her head and said “This restores my hope in the world! This makes me feel like there”s still some good and hope in this

world! Just when you”ve lost your mitten, your angel comes along and gives it back to you!”

We laughed, and laughed, and exchanged a hug, and giggled a little more and turned back to our own paths again still smiling and chuckling to ourselves.

What a moment. What an absolutely blissful moment of total gratitude and now-ness. I love Patty. I love that I know her, help her feel better in her body even when she”s worn out from work. I love that I knew she”d lost her mitten and that I had the sweet, sweet fortune of returning it to her.

But most of all I love what she said, how incongruous yet totally relevant it seems that the return of a brown speckled mitten coul

d make her proclaim This makes me feel like there”s still some good and hope in this world! “Just when you”ve lost your mitten, your angel comes along and gives it back to you!”

Thank you, Patty for the opportunity to know you and to teach you. May we all be of service and may we be so honored to have our relationships and work make a difference whether we are finding lost mittens or changing people”s bodies or just offering a kindness when it”s needed.

May you all enjoy the moment-to-moment presence of your teaching now and always.

-c