I don’t know when we started feeling so far from each other, but the news suggests humanity is over. On my paddle board in the Pacific Ocean, life is calm, with an occasional rolling wave to lean into, surf, and trust. This morning ritual provides perspective pre-election that indeed we are part of nature, and shall return.

Other reminders that there is still good can be found on the Santa Fe River path, which lucky for me, picks up at the end of my street. On the path, everyone is walking toward better mental health and the light is bouncing off the fall leaves like it does in New Mexico, and again that sense that…all is well.

I don’t know if it’s the school girl on her bike, who passes me looking straight into my eyes saying—“You have a beautiful evening….” Or if instead, it’s the group of teen-age boys with their floppy hair waving at me carrying a box of Duncan Donuts exclaiming—“Hi—we’re giving out free donuts for Veterans Day.”

It is moments like these, I am brought to tears by the beauty of people. I don’t know what they vote for and I don’t care, because on the River Path we all feel same. The early snow storm has made our city river rush, and I listen to the sound of it while some choose to walk their dogs right against it skipping over rocks to cross over. 

The mountains stretch wide in front of me and most days, provide spectacular sunsets into my favorite when my walk ends later than expected, and the sky turns a calming shade of purple. 

This too makes me tear, the color purple, and I realize I am quite emotionally available these days; to my clients who express their fears through poses, or my beloved who squeezes me election eve after finding out so soon.

My job is perhaps easier than yours. 

I teach love. The very translation of yoga is union. I have no other choice than to believe and spread it, as I always have.

Even when I saw New Orleans abandoned, or the plane hit the second tower, or the day they stripped my rights to my body. Still—I believe. A bit like Santa Claus, I suppose and my grandmother’s faith in lighting a bayberry candle on Christmas. 

That the light deserves tending, and humanity still in the end…chooses Love.

Seek—and ye shall be found.

Blessed Holidays,