Today, while reconnecting with my educator mindset amidst a swirl of emotions, I felt a fiery intensity building within me. I knew I needed a hot yoga class to burn through my thoughts, and as always, there was a pivotal moment in class that shifted everything.
Tonight’s yoga class reinforced a key lesson:
We come to yoga to face challenges—to invest time and energy into the struggle itself. “Yoga” is training the body and mind to work in harmony, threading breath with movement together as we create union within our inner and outer selves.
On the mat, the conversation is deeply personal, a dialogue between you and your body. Unlike interactions with coworkers, friends, or partners, this conversation is confined to you and your mat. There is no further to look for the problem (or solution!) to a problem than yourself. On the mat, you measure your strengths and weaknesses through this limited scope—through breath, poses, and meditative state. Through our practice. you come to grips with how you perform.
The mat becomes a reflection of your personal ebb and flow, as you synchronize your movements and breath with those around you. Through this practice of a very personal conversation, you learn to manage and integrate stress and emotional experiences of the internal dialogue and external pressures, you persevere and you find success, no matter what, at the end of every class.
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As I navigate this new chapter in my life as both an Educator and the Director of Grassroots Yoga Center, I often find myself circling the same thoughts about how I will possibly make all of this work together. And it occurred to me that if I apply the principle of “we can do hard things” as a central principal for my English class, I am not walking two separate paths but rather integrating them into one.
We can do hard things.
I can believe in this principle.
I do believe in this principle. Every time I step on my mat.
We can do hard things.
We can react with grace when others disrupt our flow. We can check in with our bodies, be aware of our physiological responses, and move with intention because of the awareness we cultivate in our time on the mat. We can muster compassion when our ego demands respect. We can choose the harder, but gentler path in our interactions with our most difficult students even when we can dig up hundreds of reasons why we should respond with anger or verbal violence.
We can do the hard things.
The ability to pause and CHOOSE requires cultivating the “muscle” of pausing and reflecting before reacting. It requires us practicing the process of choosing.

Love this! I CAN do hard things. This coupled with the message on the card I drew in Amanda's class yesterday, "the universe has your back." I can and I will do hard things, and the universe stands beside me all along the way on this grand
adventure.
Thank you Emilee! Marietta