I See the Moon: Wild Advent

 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established; what are humans that you are mindful of them,

    mortals that you care for them?

~~Psalm 8:3-4💛

The night before our final (cold) full moon of 2025, I could not sleep. I had gone to bed early. But around midnight, found myself wide awake. This was not my first time. I have experienced this before. It's well documented that in the days leading up to the full moon, our sleep can be affected.

In yoga class yesterday, I broached the subject of the full moon. My students were familiar with this phenomenon. A full moon is a time of, well, fullness. This fullness can be experienced in myriad ways. Babies tend to be born during full moons. Medical professionals often report that mental health issues can be exacerbated during full moons. In class, we practiced balance poses to help mitigate some of these potential challenges. Tree pose and half-moon or ardha chandrasana.

And of course, savasana. 

As I gazed at the rising moon later that evening, I was on the phone with my daughter, Caroline. She was walking her dog in New York City, looking at the moon as her own busy day was drawing to a close. 

That we can connect with loved ones far away while appreciating a gorgeous full moon is something I pray I will never take for granted. What a gift! Later that evening, we Facetimed with our grandson as he opened our birthday gifts that had arrived in the mail that day. Once again, I feel such gratitude that we can stay connected through technology.

There is a wildness, a wilderness to make a biblical association, that extends beyond our immediate perception. In the vastness of the cosmos, we are connected in ways we can (sort of) comprehend and again in ways that remain mysteries. The gorgeous moon reminds me of the fullness of God’s love for all of us. It reminds me that we are not alone. No surprise that such infinite, unconditional affection could overwhelm our fragile and finite neural circuitry. 

With other wild creatures, I awaken before a full moon. I ponder the amazing goodness and provision of God, and I am grateful to the Creator of the Universe, who literally wakes us up with such glorious, brilliant light that is simply impossible to miss.

Spiritual Practice: Watch this film featuring Ilia Delio. Reflect on your experience of some of the great mysteries of the cosmos.

June Yoga Practice

 June is bustin' out all over. It can be a lot. So, this practice is a reminder to stay present in the moment at hand, not jumping forward in thought, word, or deed until that now moment properly arrives. Even if you spend fifty minutes with this video breathing along with us and nothing more, you are practicing yoga. And good for you!

Dreaming of Ram Dass

Ram Dass was in a headstand

I was happy to see it. 

His last years were spent in a wheelchair, after all.

In the dream, I was in a hurry.

This seemed to bother him.

But he did not falter.

He stayed. Upside down.

Sirsasana, King of all asanas. 

Stimulating the lymphatic system,

Enhancing mental focus.

Building strength, concentration, balance!

In my haste, 

I might have missed his message.

Now.

Here.

Be. 

 

The Flower Full Moon

On this day of the Flower Full Moon, which also happens to fall the day following Mother’s Day in the US, we may feel called to reflect on the fullness of the love of Mother; Mother God, our earthly mothers - our original source of nurturance - Mother Earth, who supports our descent into this realm at birth, sustains us throughout our lives, and welcomes us back into her womb at our deaths. The Full Flower Moon invites us to imagine with faith the growth that comes when we can fully comprehend that very often the light shines brightest when things appear darkest.

Can we draw from the love that is offered this day, and in the week ahead? Can we release past hurts and traumas? Can we offer forgiveness and grace where necessary, staying open to new growth and transformation?

The yoga shape suggested for today is supported fish. It is a heart-opening shape that invites expansion and growth while encouraging us to accept the support of props.

Supported fish is a shape that can help us practice receiving love while resting, allowing our nervous system to return, as much as possible, to its original factory setting. 

Today is a lovely day to relax in a supported fish for ten minutes or so. Breathe here. Notice the effect on the body, the mind, and the spirit. 

Today might also be a good day to plant a Summer garden, create something new,  make vacation plans, reach out to someone who would appreciate hearing your voice, mend a relationship, to pray or to dream.

Praying for Pigeon

 Love one another.

      ~~Jesus

In all the busyness this week, I almost missed it. A subtle but profoundly clear message from the universe. At the end of a long exhausting week, it was Emma, the pretty, perky yoga instructor in her crop top, yoga shorts, and baseball cap, who literally and figuratively straightened me out. As we settled in on our mats, she introduced her new fiancé to the class. The burly, bearded, precious young man/yogi unapologetically took up prime real estate in the front row of class. He was there for Emma; this was evident. And Emma showed her gratitude by dedicating the class to her beloved.

Like many yoga teachers, Emma started class with a dharma talk, a short sermon-like speech about something the teacher deems important. Emma reminded the class on this day that we should make it a point to appreciate our “people,” those folks who love us, show up for us, and care for us. To further drive home her message, Emma’s playlist included one love song after another, ending the practice with Ellie Goulding’s How Long Will I Love You? It was a little distracting but also very sweet. 

 

I had come to the class to be taught by someone else; to practice, I reminded myself. I didn't want to think. Yet predictably, my thoughts frequently drifted from the present moment, thinking about Emma’s choice of music, the rising temperature of the crowded room, or a random foot that landed unexpectedly in my face. At some point in the class, I found myself praying for pigeon pose.  

Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, or Pigeon pose, is no joke. With one leg extended back and the other at a near right angle in front, it is a hip opener of epic proportions. Pigeon challenges us to breathe deeply and stay in the moment. It is an invitation to stay and be with discomfort. It is said that pigeon can release pent-up emotions that we unconsciously store in our hips. Sometimes in a hip opener, emotions arise, and our job, our practice, is to observe them without judgment. This, according to yogic wisdom, is how challenging emotions are dislodged from the body. I always feel better after pigeon, and so I prayed.

 

Prayers have been flowing a lot this summer. I have prayed for my “people” and my people’s people. I have prayed for the world and for my own little world, which has enlarged to include a cohort of seminary friends and professors. And as a new semester is before me, I pray for the grace to navigate new lessons, new ideas, and unfamiliar territory. Because sometimes, I tend to grit my teeth and push through incredibly tough things without leaning on others, I pray for the wisdom to ask for help when I need it. 

 

At one point during a static pose, I think it might have been a standing split; I found myself thinking about my Thursday morning chair yoga class that I love teaching so much. This past week two of the women brought their husbands to class. Like Emma and her betrothed, I found myself wondering about my students’ relationships and how they had decided to attend class together. I wondered if Ed, wearing compression socks on both legs, had come with his wife Catherine willingly or under some duress. I wondered about Greg and his wife Ginny. How long had they been together? What did Greg hope to get out of class? Was he there to please or support his wife, Ginny?

 

The average age in my chair yoga class is probably about 80 years young. One student turned 93 over the summer. These folks show up to take care of themselves, their bodies, minds, and spirits. And they, no doubt, want to take care of their people too. In the sweaty flow class I took with Emma at the helm, I suspect the average age is about 40 years younger than my chair class. They, too, likely want to take care of themselves and their people. Because we tend to teach what we want to learn more about, it’s the reason I became a yoga teacher. I want to be healthy, strong, and wise at 93.

 

So, I practice and try to stay present, but it’s often a struggle. In my persistent praying for pigeon, I almost missed what Emma and her darling future husband, Ed, Catherine, Greg, and Ginny, had to teach me this week. Sometimes the important stuff is just below the surface of our awareness, waiting to be discovered. Like one of Jesus’ most excellent parables, it takes a certain amount of open-hearted vulnerability to unveil its wisdom.

                                                            Love your "people."                         

                                                                   ~~Emma

 

I love my people. I am blessed with really good people. I am grateful for all of them; a loving, supportive husband who brings me coffee and, over the years, has become a really impressive listener.  A loving mother, father, sister, brother, children, nieces, nephews, friends, and all their loved ones are in my prayers. But Emma is right. I need to let them know more often how very much I love and appreciate them, how special they are to me. 

 

Close to the very end of class, guess what? Emma masterfully cued us into the juiciest pigeon pose. My tired body gratefully surrendered to its wisdom. Soon afterward, as I lay on my mat in a blissful state of savasana, I found myself silently praying for a cool, lavender-scented cloth for my forehead.

 

“As you settle into your savasana,” Emma announced sweetly, “I’ll be coming around with a cool lavender-infused cloth.” 

 

A Prayer for Our "People"

Gracious and loving creator, thank you for the blessing of people; our people, our people’s people, and all of theirs.

Bless us and help us to remember to cherish them as you cherish each one of us.

Help us to be open to learning from one another, young, old, and everyone in between.

Help us to see below the surface of things to what really matters. 

Remind us to use the gift of breath to move gracefully through challenges and grant us wisdom to know when to ask for help. 

With gratitude, in all the holy names of God, we pray.

Amen.

 

 My parents; two of my favorite people.

 

 

 

Lighten

Hey Friends,

Just a quick post to catch up and offer a little light during troubling times. That's my plan and I'm sticking to it!

These days, it takes a conscious effort to stay flexible enough to roll with the many changes, strong enough to be resilient and light-hearted enough to take ourselves less seriously. This gentle practice was created for all of the above. Enjoy and pass it on if you found it useful.

For many people, the mending of relationships, given up for lost has been a satisfying outcome of our quarantine time. Some of us, have realized the fragility of life this past year and want to share our wisdom with loved ones while we can. 

Like 107-year-old Nonnie Bonita, who became a YouTube sensation on her 102nd birthday. As she blew out the candles, on her birthday cake, her dentures flew right out of her mouth and her hilarious response immediately went viral. If you haven’t seen the video, you must! This year Nonnie lived through her second pandemic. Nonnie has lots of good advice to share after her long, challenging life, like always look at the bright side and never, ever hold a grudge.

Stay poised in the light friends. This too shall pass. Many blessings to you and yours.

Namaste,
Connie

Waking Up Happy

These days waking up seems like a tall order, happiness aside. 

And yet I am strangely, surprisingly optimistic. 

Our culture is trying really hard to wake up. We are seeing more clearly the injustices that have been plaguing us for centuries all in the midst of a very real plague. For the first time in maybe forever many of us are getting still enough to see more clearly the subtle and often insidious ways our hearts have become hardened to truth, to beauty, to one another, and to ourselves.

It is high time for all of us to wake up. 

Let's be real, waking up can be hard to do. And downright painful, literally and metaphorically.


Here is a gentle practice to ground our day in inspiration and positivity. Here is a gentle practice to move our bodies, our temples of the divine, so that we can move in places where we may have been a little stuck. It's a practice that I like to do each and every morning. You are, of course, free to make this your own by tweaking it to meet your needs.


We have to wake up if we are to keep moving forward as a human family. We have to start somewhere. Best to start from the ground up. 


As we celebrate International Day of Yoga on the heels of Juneteenth, in harmonious concert with the Summer Solstice let us bathe in the light of this longest day. Let us move and breathe and pray together until our hearts begin to soften toward ourselves, one another and our precious planet. Let us move and breathe and pray and not stop until we are all free.


If the grace of seeing were ours this day, we would see the divine in every living soul. Grant us the grace seeing this day. 

Grant us the grace of seeing.

Namaste and Love,
Connie

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created. 
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies. 
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere. 
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, 
every morning, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

~~Mary Oliver

Connie Bowman is an actress, podcast host, yoga teacher, and author of several books, including There's an Elephant in My Bathtub, Super Socks and Back to Happy. Follow her on Instagram @conniebowmanactressauthoryogior visit www.conniebowman.com. Join her for yoga Tuesday evenings here.

Link to John Phillip Newells book Celtic Benediction: https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/3904/celtic-benediction.aspx

Best Laid Plans

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry."

~~Robert Burns

Are you a man or a mouse? I am neither but I can relate to this quote by poet Robert Burns. My plan to meditate every morning and evening has gone awry, several times actually.

This video is part of my plan to bring meditation back into my life on a regular basis. I already practice yoga. I have other regular spiritual practices like prayer and sacred reading. I am even thinking seminary might be in my future. So why is meditating so difficult? Are you with me on this?

Problem is you gotta do it. I have been an on and off meditator since my twenties when I began suffering from anxiety and panic attacks. This year, blessed 2020, was my year to reinstate meditation. It didn’t happen in January. February came and went with no remarkable improvement. And then Covid-19 and the quarantine happened. 

Back in 2015 I interviewed Dr. Sara Lazar, the Harvard scientist who researched meditation and other integrative modalities to find out just what benefits they had to offer. Dr. Lazar found significant benefits from regular meditation practice. That video is here: https://youtu.be/xGvGbKuzQf8. 

I know it's good for me in so many ways; physically, emotionally, spiritually...

You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day, unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour.

~~Zen Saying

Still, I admit it has been a bit of a struggle. 

So I don’t have a perfect daily practice. I am practicing though. I invite you to join me.

But first, let’s practice a little yoga to loosen our joints and prepare the body and mind for a sweet, imperfect, short little meditation.

We can do this! 

Was it good for you? Let me know :)

Yoga is for everyone. However, while practicing with a video it is up to you to assess whether the class you have chosen is right for you. Please modify as needed and if you suffer from any specific injuries or diseases you should consult with your medical practitioner before practicing. Enjoy!

Namaste,

Connie

www.conniebowman.com

Goldie Hawn and the Three Bears

Once upon a time, during the days of quarantine, there was a yogi named Goldie - Goldie Hawn. For Goldie, quarantine had been not so bad, for she was a yogi. Her practice had made her strong. She knew how to breathe deeply when things got tough and how to stay flexible when life was challenging and seemed to be changing faster than usual.

Like many other Californians, she was also a vegan and an animal rights activist. She was an actress and she and her husband had made quite a nice life for themselves. Then the virus hit. They huddled together in their Hollywood mansion for the first few weeks. One day, after her husband Kurt Russell insisted that she watch The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes for the fourth time, Goldie decided it was time to get out of the house and take a walk.

Getting out of her pajamas for the first time in days, she dressed in her favorite Fabletics yoga ensemble, packed her understated faux leather Chanel bag, and headed out the door, blowing a quick kiss to Kurt who was deeply engrossed in the 70’s Disney blockbuster film in which he had the starring role.

She needed a break from Kurt. She needed to breathe some newly fresh Los Angeles air. Since the quarantine, the air had never been cleaner. She just needed to walk. Goldie needed to clear her mind. She also needed her roots done, but that's another story.

Heading east, she lost track of time. Soon she lost track of her location. Checking the GPS app on her iPhone she realized she had crossed the border into Arizona. Feeling good, she reached into her purse for a Kind bar and munched as she walked, thinking about the state of the world and wondering how this would all end. As she passed people wearing their masks she would wave and smile. With her own mask on, she was unrecognizable and she began to be grateful for her anonymity. For the first time in a long while, she felt connected like she was one with the rest of the world.

Before long Goldie realized she was already in Colorado and, while crossing the Rockies, her purse started to get really heavy. She thought she had packed lightly; some energy bars, an eco-friendly refillable water bottle, her phone charger, some essential makeup and hair products, a pair of chopsticks in case she found a decent Thai restaurant for carry out, and a few gummy bears she had bought at a dispensary back home. You can take the girl out of California…

Like Elise in First Wives Club, she discovered she needed to let go of her excess baggage if she were to be able to keep walking.

Like the resourceful soldier Judy in Private Benjamin would have done, she grabbed her cell phone and left her purse with the rest of her belongings on a log by a beautiful mountain lake and kept on moving eastward. Letting go of some things that had been weighing her down was not so hard for a yogi like Goldie. She didn’t even look back. 

She didn't know where she would end up and that had to be okay. 

One foot after the other, Goldie Hawn just kept walking.

After she had crossed into Kansas she was starting to feel like she needed a rest. Looking around she realized she was deep in a forest. Spotting a cabin off in the distance, Goldie headed in that direction. When she got to the door of the house, she knocked. No answer. She peeked in the window and didn’t see anyone. So she tried the front doorknob and it opened! Goldie noticed that the table was set and on it were three steaming bowls of mac and cheese. 

Her mouth started watering. She was famished. It had been way longer than the 90-minute eating intervals she had gotten used to since the quarantine had started. Ugh, I’m a vegan, she thought for a second or two. With a big sigh and a wary glance, she dug into the biggest bowl. It was cheesy, creamy, and delicious but it was too hot! She sampled the medium-sized bowl; much too cold. Then she tried the smallest bowl and it was so, well, so just right, so she scarfed it all down savoring every last bite!

After dinner, she was really, really tired. So she made her way into the living room where she found three comfy-looking chairs sitting in front of a blazing fireplace. She sat in the biggest chair but it was too hard. The middle-sized chair was too soft. But the baby-sized chair was, you know, just right, so she sat on down. Maybe her butt had gotten a little bigger during the quarantine because when she tried to get up out of the chair, she couldn’t. Taking the chair with her, she waddled to the bedroom where she found three beds. She didn’t even bother to try the two larger ones. She hopped right into the baby-sized bed, chair all stuck to her butt and fell fast asleep. 

Deep in her pasta coma, Goldie was snoring loudly when the bears came back from their walk. After seeing the missing mac and cheese, they followed the clues until they found her sleeping soundly, so comfy in baby bear’s bed.

Mama bear hushed the others and shooed them out the bedroom door as she gently pulled the chair from Goldie’s butt and covered her with a soft blanket. Papa bear noticed Goldie’s cell phone was dead so he plugged it into their charger. 

Baby bear lumbered back to the kitchen to find some more mac and cheese. 

Goldie ended up staying with the bear family for the next fourteen days. She apologized for breaking and entering and helping herself to their dinner. 

They had so much fun together. They relaxed, practiced yoga, played lots of board games, and watched old reruns of Laugh-In. Baby bear learned to say “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me!”

And after the pandemic was over, they remained great friends, Goldie pledged to work harder to help save their polar bear cousins. And, of course, they all lived happily, healthily ever after.

What do you call a bear with no teeth? A Gummy Bear!

What kind of shoes do bears wear? No shoes silly, they are barefoot!

If you would like to hear the bedtime story and practice yoga: Nightcap Yoga Practice
Here's a Mary Oliver Poem that I read at the end of the practice:

Spring

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

From: 

 New and Selected Poems 

Copyright ©: 

 Mary Oliver

Peace and Namaste,

Connie

Connie Bowman is an actress, podcast host, yoga teacher, and author of several books, including There's an Elephant in My Bathtub, Super Socks and Back to Happy. Follow her on Instagram @conniebowmanactressauthoryogi

That Still Small Voice

For this week’s yoga classes we are working to remove obstacles to hearing our inner voices more clearly. Our deepest knowing is always for our highest good.  Some people might call that still small inner voice the higher self. Some call it intuition. I call it God. In this video with my dear friend and priest Dina Van Klaveran she says that God is always talking to us. It’s our job to clear away those things that get in the way of hearing that voice. For me, yoga helps. Meditation and contemplation helps. Yoga’s not a problem for me. I teach so I have to practice. And I do love the practice and the way it makes my body feel; flexible, relaxed and free to move about the world. Sitting still and meditating is a whole different thing.

We know the benefits of meditation and quieting the mind. It reduces stress and can be healing on all levels; spiritual, emotional, mental and physical. Blood pressure can lower which affects the health of so many of our organs. Our brain function is enhanced with meditation, helping with addictions, progressive diseases of the brain and body like Parkinsons, Alzheimers and dementia. There is much research to back this up and this video with Dr. Sara Lazar was especially enlightening to me back when I was just learning to be a yoga teacher.

I have become quite proficient at meditation procrastination. It’s a thing. Here are just some of the many distractions I will create to avoid meditating. I will…

cook

eat

drink wine

clean out my closet

talk on the phone

text

watch HGTV

online shop

listen to audiobooks, podcasts

run/walk while I listen to audiobooks, podcasts

think about meditating

ruminate about not meditating

almost everything else

Any of these familiar to you? Can you add to the list? Go for it!

Hearing that still small voice has become even more important for me, especially as I age and feel the need to tune in more deeply to stay present to my body to prevent injury, to know what my body needs for nourishment and, most importantly for me,  to stay connected to the Creator, the source of my spiritual guidance. 

Several years ago I planned to go to New York City to visit my daughter Caroline who had only been there for a couple of weeks to pursue her acting career. Dropping her off in that huge city was difficult for me and her father, as you can imagine. She was young and full of innocence and ambition. I prayed she was listening to that still small voice to keep her safe as she walked the streets off Manhattan, especially at night. 

As I got ready to get in my car to head for the BWI train station, I heard a small voice telling me to go back in the house and grab the flip camera ( I loved my Flip. It was HD 1080P, excellent sound and video, and had a handy USB port for easy transfer to the computer. How I miss my Flip!) on the kitchen counter. It was very specific instruction so I paid attention. I put the camera in my purse and headed out to board the  9 AM train to NYC. Little did I know that later on that day on the corner of 45th and 9th (or 10th) Ave. my daughter would get her first offer to be in a Broadway show. Had I not been paying attention to that still small voice I wouldn’t have had my Flip with me (my phone was a flip phone too at that time. No video on that ancient device!) and I wouldn’t have been able to whip it out and take this precious video which let us share her contagious, very genuine joy with family and friends. I remember someone asking me if she was acting in this video. I had to laugh. It was the realest real deal. It was a moment to savor and, because I listened I was able to capture it on video. I did edit it a bit and add a recording she had previously made of her singing the role she would soon be playing in Wicked on Broadway.

I have had many other experiences like this, but this one stands out for me as particularly special. Sometimes our still small voice doesn’t get our attention and it might start speaking louder until it manifests as a problem. And sometimes, as Oprah used to like to say on her show, it hits you like a brick right upside the head! That’s never fun.

It’s much easier to listen to and respond promptly to the quiet, loving nudge in the direction of our best life.

Mary Oliver says it so well in her famous poem The Journey:

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

So we practice. I am sorry to say we have to keep up the practice. I wish it were easier. So I am recommitting to my meditation practice, starting this week. If you have a Lenten practice, this might coincide nicely for you. 

Here’s to that still small voice. May we be open to the sweet whisper from the One who loves us so dearly and only wants what’s best for us. May we be still enough, often enough, to discern that voice from the louder, harsher voices that intrude on our peace from a very broken world. And may we all know that peace, the true peace that passes all understanding and pass it around as needed.

Peace and Namaste.

Laughter as Medicine

Want the change

by Rainer Maria Rilke

English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

This morning as my chair yoga class at the Florence Bain Center in Columbia finished savasana and gently drew their hands to their hearts into prayer to whisper the closing “Namaste”, I was overcome with emotion. These seniors who show up to practice yoga, despite their physical and cognitive limitations, have taught me much more than I could ever teach them.

Many of them battle pain, depression, chronic illness, and the challenges that come with aging, yet they make their way to our sweet sacred circle every week to breathe and move their bodies; to practice yoga together.

Today we practiced laughter yoga. It was a bit of a risk for me, a relatively new yoga teacher. I have been teaching for three years in Howard County. I never thought I’d be teaching seniors. I started teaching because I really believe in the healing benefits of yoga, having experienced them myself. Years ago, after the death of my six-year-old daughter Meghan, yoga was a practice that helped get me through the grieving process. I wrote about it in my book, Back to Happy. The physical practice, the meditation, and the opportunity to slow down were saving graces for me as I faced the difficult task of learning to accept that my daughter was gone.

When I introduced the idea of laughter yoga, I wasn’t sure how it would go over. With a couple of the students in wheelchairs, there are always modifications to the traditional poses that need to happen. But this was something altogether new for this brave class that typically ranges in age from 72 to 92. They are usually pretty game for my antics, but still, I had apprehension about trying something so new and different.

One of the chapters in my book Back to Happy is all about acceptance. Losing a child is hard to accept. Darn near impossible to be more precise. In those early days, months, and even years, I looked for almost any way to avoid the reality of her loss. I kept myself impossibly busy; too busy to think, too busy to breathe, too busy to hear the beating of my broken heart.

The class started with a “pranayama” exercise I called Ha Ha Hee Hee Hee, which we chanted for several rounds. By the end, a few students were smiling as I suggested they close their eyes and notice the effects of the exercise. We deepened and slowed our breath and sat in silence together, enjoying a short meditation. That went well, I thought to myself. Maybe this will work after all.

In another chapter of my book, I wrote about the day I learned to surrender. I had been trying to go on with life, being a mommy to my other two young children while deeply missing my daughter Meghan. The sadness was affecting me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I didn't know what to do anymore. I had reached the bottom I suppose. That day, it was afternoon as I recall, I got down on my knees in my living room and cried out to God.

God and I had not exactly been on speaking terms after Meghan’s death. I was brought up in the Episcopal church, a generic enough religion. I knew all the proper prayers. They just weren't getting me anywhere. Until that day in my living room when, in desperation, I let down my armor and told God out loud that I couldn’t do this alone and I really, really, really could use a hand. 

After our meditation, the class loosened up a bit with some gentle neck stretches in preparation for phase two of laughter yoga. The next part of my little experiment involved an invisible telephone which we held up to our ears. Then we imagined that we had just been told the funniest joke ever over that phone. These obliging, funny, enthusiastic yogis went for it! They started with small chuckles which soon grew into roaring laughter. As they looked at one another their laughter became contagious. They kept it going for several minutes until this group of around ten sounded like an audience at a comedy show. One yogi snorted (or maybe that was me). When we finished our laughter yoga, all of us closed our eyes and observed the physical, chemical, and emotional changes that we knew were going on inside.

I thought I learned a lot from my grief journey, and surely I did. I never dreamed I would be teaching yoga to the senior population. The honor of teaching this courageous group of souls has given me much more than I ever expected, certainly much more than I give to them. I'm pretty sure it was a God thing.

Happiness is an inside job. Life is hard and if we’re lucky, we have the privilege of getting old.

To do this life thing well, we’ve got to keep moving and breathing and loving one another. 

I am still on my journey back to happy and grateful to be on it with this fantastic and incredibly wise group of yogis.

Namaste,

Connie Bowman

Connie Bowman is an actress, voice-over talent, yoga teacher, and author of Back to Happy, a Journey of Hope, Healing and Waking Up, and a new children's book entitled There's an Elephant in My Bathtub. For more info: www.conniebowman.com