If you are one of our members, past, present, or future, I’m grateful for you. Your support means we at Glo also have the opportunity to become a more cohesive team. Our work enlivens us and you are a source of inspiration. Hearing from you is a gift.
Your stories share experiences of learning and life-changing transformation that impact the world. Revealing your vulnerability, you privilege us with your attention and abilities to reveal deeper self-understanding and care.
We see ourselves in your stories. You help us see the world differently. You help us to see more world. You challenge us and remind us of the positive differences we make together.
Thank you!
Inspired by your stories, each month I’ll be sharing a conversation with a member of Glo, where we dive into how their practice has affected their everyday life. This month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Kelly.
If you’re struggling with fear, practicing presence during this time of extreme unknowns, unsure how to connect with what self-care means for you, starting over after an injury, or with motivating to practice at home and online, Kelly shares how she manages. Some passages from our conversation are below. The eighteen-minute audio version of our conversation is here. Though I recommend you block out more than eighteen minutes because after you hear her message, you’ll likely want to roll out your mat.
“I think that, right now, all that we can really do is just be present. There are so many times I’ve tried to think ahead and plan ahead and it all just crumbles within five minutes because so much is unknown right now. There’s a lot of potency in being ok with just sitting with the unknown and trusting that things will unfold as they need to.
When you understand how important self-care is, it means looking at how much time you’re spending on your devices and reallocating that time. Once we see the effects of making the time, it becomes easier to prioritize.
Just having that one thing each day that is stable when everything else around you is chaotic or crumbling, sometimes that’s enough to pull you through… I look at yoga in a lot of the same ways as I would brushing my teeth, or making breakfast, or cooking dinner, it’s something that’s just part of my life.
After a neck injury a few years ago, I had to start my practice from scratch again. It’s just been a really beautiful journey of backward and forward, and every day is different… there is no finish line with yoga. Every time I get on my mat, something is different. I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s exciting every day, I literally don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just a wonderful part of the practice, that stepping into the unknown every time.
Self-care enables us to be the best version of ourselves. It fills us up so that we can be present, so that we can do the things that we love, to be with the people we love. When we don’t have that solid foundation I feel like it’s so challenging to be the best you.
Yoga will infiltrate your daily life no matter what. It gets in there. So a lot of the lessons that I’ve learned while I’m doing my practice I find they do carry into my world and whether that’s something more meditative, being present. A lot of the lessons I’ve learned over the last year are working through fear.
That switching off switches you back on. Prioritizing that is so beneficial. I feel like a brand new person. I can go from a place of being so chaotic and in my head, confused, and anxious. I find that I emerge from that feeling entirely different. I’ll be feeling balanced, clear, focused, reenergized, peaceful. It’s like night and day. When you realize how big of an effect it has, it makes getting on your mat every day easier and easier because you know what’s going to happen at the end of that time on the mat. That’s one of the main things that keeps me coming back. I may not get off the mat feeling the whole world’s problems have been solved, but I know I’ll get off feeling better I did before I got on.”
Kelly’s three favorite classes right now:
Sweaty Fun Flow with Stephanie Snyder
Vinyasa Flow – 60 min
Celebrate Life with Robust Poses with Kathryn Budig
Vinyasa Flow -90 min
Find Gratitude Flow with Kathryn Budig
Vinyasa Flow – 60 min
