Tomorrow, I start teaching my first prenatal class in quite a while.  I look at my schedule and see that I am now teaching six classes a week.  I am barely making coffee (for those of you new to the party, I became a barista when we moved to MN in 2011 since I couldn't seem to make much of a career out of yoga being new to the community and all).  I will be taking my yoga show on the road in the next few months, with weekend workshops in North Dakota and Iowa.  A new student is connecting me with a studio in Duluth, MN that might be amenable to a similar weekend workshop. 

And at last, I am felting.  I laid out a scarf last week and exhausted my body felting on Wednesday.  I have a little trouble understanding how I ever made ten of these in one week a few years back, but I look forward to regaining that kind of drive and strength. Once I feel a bit more secure in my yoga career, I will finally spend a bit of energy finding the right venues for selling all this Woolynns stuff (some of it is currently just designs in my head). I'll fix up my tent/booth and get better displays.  But that is still a bit further down the road.

Having this kind of time and space to create (yoga, scarves) also gives me breathing room to be more present for my family.  My children may not need me to accompany them on play dates anymore, but being stuck at home all summer is not going to be the default option this year.

I'm hardly feeling like everything is all good to go, but the way is getting clearer and the possibilities keep me smiling every day as I drive from one yoga class to another, as I lay out another scarf, as I add everyone's activities to the calendar.

I'm back.

I have this friend who inspires me.  I do not want to follow in her footsteps.  While I enjoy hooping, it is not my joy.  I do not necessarily need to become a public speaker like her, though I am good at that.  What she inspires me to do is to find my joy.  
Joy.  That has been a meager commodity in recent years.  My family was struggling financially. My husband was struggling professionally.  And I was struggling to land in a new city and create a new life that I was determined would look much like the one I left behind in Michigan.  
So here I am, nearly two years after my move, and I am finding my way to joy again.  My days look nothing and everything like they used to.  I get up every morning and walk a dog in temperatures where no sane person should venture.  I drive children to early morning practices, evening games, concerts and competitions.  I have learned how to make a mean latte at the coffee shop where I still work a shift or two a week.  I haven't managed to felt anything in over 18 months.  I get on the mat several days a week to practice and learn from my body.  I still don't have the yoga teaching schedule I want.  But I do have new perspective.
One day last year, I sat down with Theresa Rose (yes, the one in the video above), and said quite clearly that I knew my old methods for re-creating my previous life weren't working.  I couldn't figure out how to get over the brick wall in my way and and did she have any ideas.  Now, Theresa has taken my classes and worked with me privately to learn to free up her body to move more fully with her hoop.  She knows what I do and how good I am at it.  Through her eyes, I was able to see what exactly it is that I am passionate about.  And she helped me see new ways to bring that passion forth.
I have let go of assumptions about what I do and where it will best be enjoyed.  I have reached out in ways I never had imagined and find myself creating a future that includes teaching weekend workshops in neighboring states; mentoring teachers interested in Eischens Yoga; renting spaces to create my own floating studio, Eischens Yoga MN; bringing a practice to address back pain to corporations.  And you know what?  I am actually doing all those things.  They are not some distant future.  They are now.  
At a recent photo shoot, I realized that I feel most joyous in yoga not while doing certain poses, but while helping others experience something extraordinary in their own bodies.  I asked the photographer to shoot me while I worked on other people, while I talked and explained and gave physical resistance to someone in a pose.  Those photos were the most beautiful and joyous of the bunch.
Joy.  Yep, I'm finding it again.  And with it comes freedom and time and knowing I have enough, knowing I am enough.  And guess who is planning on felting again this Spring?
Oh, Joyous Movement.