i am woman, hear me rawr!

Many of my friends know Christmas isn’t really one of my favorite holidays. I kinda get melodramatic and lonely during the holidays and well, suffice it to say it gets to me. This year, however, I found myself surviving much better than usual Yey, I suppose One thing I am grateful for about this holiday is that I was able to share such a great gift to many of my friends and family. While I did not really splurge on expensive gifts (although I did consider sending flowers online to my friends abroad), I am glad to know my little gratitude journal gift inspired many others to do the same thing For that, this holiday will always be remembered.

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A week ago today I had the pleasure of chatting with a yoga teacher I hadn’t practiced with for a long time. As always I got to the studio quite early, and so we had quite a bit of time to catch up.  We talked not just about the practice, per se, but also quite a bit about how yoga is really more than asanas. I couldn’t agree more. I told her how about how yoga has been such a wonderful gift to me this year. It has helped me weather the greatest of storms and allowed me to get to know myself better in ways I never would have imagined. I told her, too, how through the practice I saw sides of me I didn’t know existed…the girl who was carefree and happy, the me who was open and willing to try new things, the me who just was. It was quite interesting how she said something about how, upon meeting me, she felt like i was a free spirit and we laughed at how I said I thought of myself as the opposite.  That got me to thinking about how I often force myself to fit a mold that has been designed for me. I have, in many ways, caged that spirit.

And so in class, I set my intention that I be able to find the courage to soar. After all, they say a caged bird never sings right? And I thought that it’s about time I allow my heart and soul to sing again. In savasana, I watched myself open up my hands and fly. While having lunch, I glanced up at the little corner of the cafe I was in and saw this…

Open the door, Ri. fly. That was the Universe’s message and Christmas present to me, I’d like to believe.

The next day, I drove to this pretty little sanctuary down south and did just that. I flew on a pretty silken cocoon through AntiGravity yoga

It was the best Christmas gift I have ever received and for that I will eternally be grateful. Who needs a new mat or a yogitoes towel when you can have the gift of flight, right? Har. I am, however, looking forward to the mat my sister sent me for Christmas. I still love mat time, after all

Merry Christmas, my friends. I wish you happiness and joy. I wish you the courage to fly as well, in whatever way, shape or form this may be. Most of all, I wish you love.

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One of my favorite things to do in the morning (and believe me there aren’t many because I HATE waking up early in the morning!) is listen to RX 93.1′s The Morning Rush with Chico and Delamar as I drive to work. They always, always crack me up! Today was no exception. I kept laughing out loud at how they were trying to teach the other DJ, Gino, how to pronounce the word“tubo” (pipe in English) correctly. In Filipino, the word can be pronounced in three different ways to mean different things. He couldn’t get it! It was soooo funny I literally was laughing out loud and I could barely breathe! It was funny how the conversation started, actually. They were just talking about the Top 10 (a daily survey kinda thing they do) and they started talking about how some people like making people do things while in costume, such as a French maid’s uniform, a shirtless gardeners outfit or even a nurse uniform for no good reason at all. So when he talked about the gardener, he said he should hose them down with a tubo. And the riot began from there!!! I know this blog post doesn’t do it any justice, but I just had to share my random bit of sunshine for the day. If you find a podcast for todays show, do download it and see how funny it is for yourselves!

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I realized that I have more blogs that I can handle. Not that I’m complaining, however. I just realized that I haven’t been so true to the way I wanna manage my blogs, to the point that my posts kinda overrun each other. As I was browsing through my archives here, I realized I have forgotten what my goal with this blog was. It’s really, as the header says, to blog about life’s hits and misses. In short, it would be to offer information about what’s out there and what I think about it. However, because I have fallen so deeply in love with yoga, all I write about it is that. So I decided to get a new domain just for that instead It will be called Archetypes and Asanas dot com. Cool, huh? Watch out for my yoga posts there.Now, as for my self-help, insights and melodramatic life posts (haha), they will now move on to Thought Bubble Project dot com, so please visit me there too.

But here, please expect to see more reviews, more information, more ideas and the like to get you to thinking about life’s hits and misses

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I have never really a very big believer in the whole, ask and you shall receive. I do know that it is a verse in the Bible, and I do know that God will always, always provide, but perhaps the cynic in me who has been disappointed too many times in the past makes it difficult for me to really believe in that. Yes, me of little faith.

Every once in a while I find myself getting whacked in the head and being reminded by random forces to just have faith. To know that even if the answers may not come in the way I want it to be, or perhaps when I think it should, there is indeed a force greater than me that makes things fall into place when the time is right, when the situation is appropriate and when it is right for me.

I have been wanting an iPhone for the longest time. However, given my decision to give up my preschool teaching job earlier this year, my finances have been a little bit tight and I had to reassess things. Not that my impulsive shopping self has disappeared, but I decided to put expensive purchases in the back burner. Plus I got to thinking, if I spent for an iPhone, that kinda would be spending the equivalent of what, an amount that would be equivalent to about four to six months worth of unlimited yoga. And given my love for the practice, I realized that the gadgets, I didn’t really need. Har.

Buuut….

That hasn’t stopped me from asking the Universe for a new phone or one of those new waterproof cameras that can replace my old Olympus one that broke. I guess I wasn’t specific enough because this is what it ended up giving me!

No complaints, though It was such a great unexpected blessing. I won this in a raffle during the press relaunch of a dietary supplement the other day (watch out for my post in www.fatgirlnomore.com next week ). Cool, right?

And so for now….I will ask more specifically. Dear Universe, please make the stars align and make my wishes come true…this March, I really want to do a yoga retreat in Palawan and I need to conspire with you for that to happen. We can do this, right?

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I’ve been a writing slump for the past two months. Three, in fact. So many things have happened since September and I had quite a difficult time picking myself up again. Sigh. There are days that are better, I must admit. Days when I feel like my normal self and I can find the words to write. Other days, however, seem impossible. All I can do is eat. Or sleep. Or stare into space. Or go to yoga, at the very least.

This is me trying to get out of the writing slump. Wish me luck.

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