No soap, no toothpaste, no mat, no problem.

Here is a post with no pictures!*

We just got back from our little break up at Kripalu yoga center. Ahhhhhh.

We treated it like a real break from everything and I was into the Zen Packing Method which meant waking up the day we were to leave, showering, and throwing everything into a bag without a care in the world. La la la. Of course it wasn't until we were entering the Kripalu driveway that we realized that we'd left our yoga mats behind. But no bother, Andrew doesn't get skeeved out by using other people's mats (they have an abundance for borrowing there), and I just bought a new one at the Kripalu store. At first this was hard to accept...it meant I was missing my cloth mat that I use when I get all sweaty-palmed (which is approximately 2 seconds into my first down dog) and I didn't want to shell out money for another one of those, but I did realize that in the handful of years that I've been a yogini, I haven't bought myself a new basic mat. See? Things happen for a reason and the Zen Packing Method always has a way of working itself out.

Of course, forgetting our toothpaste and soap was a different story. Morning oms and morning breath do not go together very well, but by the time we'd realized that we'd done a fine job of forgetting basically the important essentials, it was all something to laugh about.

So...many yoga classes, fantastic meals, and lots of knitting and reading time later, and I'm left wondering how to keep the sense of inner calm I find at Kripalu back to my daily life - - as I finish with spring break and head into hell week for Sweeney Todd. There is something about letting go of all of the random, needless crap that bogs us down. Why do I have to read my email 80,000 times a day, and why to people feel the need to email me so much? How much of all of that effort is really important, and how much gets in the way of energy that could be spent in a more positive way? At Kripalu, there are no locks on the doors. There are safes in the room if you want to put your wallet in there, but the message is simple: don't bring goofy expensive stuff which will get in the way of finding your center anyway, and know that when you walk through the door you are entering a community of trust so don't mess with it. The expectation is there that we'll be able to manage fine with this arrangement, and I imagine that most people do. Because of the lack of keys, checking in to Kripalu consists of picking up a name tag and finding out where your room is and then you are off. And when you leave, you just leave. There's no checkout or busybody work that the staff has to do to make it all happen, no keys that they have to get for you or hold for you during the day, or make you a new copy of if you lose them. For guests, not having a room key to worry about means that if you split up from your roommate during the day, you just meet up later and can get back into the room whenever. Simple.

So this leaves me wondering, what are the busy part of my day...the unnecessary keys that seem to serve a purpose, but perhaps will become meaningless if I just readjust an aspect of my daily life. And if I can minimize or even eliminate those keys, what space will I have created for other, more meaningful activities?

And with that, I'm off to a double rehearsal (afternoon rehearsal, dinner, evening rehearsal) for Sweeney. Om.

*and the reason there are no pictures? I brought the camera and found the perfect photo to take of the mountains on the morning we were leaving - it had been snowing all morning and then the clouds broke all whispy-like over the mountains and lake. And as I set up my shot and looked into the view finder, a little red light indicated "no card". Well, at least the Zen Packing Method produced consistent results. And the truth of the matter was that I should have been standing there looking at the beautiful scenery rather than trying to fuss with photographing it.