 Dear Friends,
There is this magnificent oak tree in Rock Creek Park, right at the top of the hill next to the horse arena, you might have seen it if you live around here. It stands there at the top of the hill growing into itself and aging in a strong and beautiful way. One of my main goals in teaching movement practices is to teach in a way that allows my students and myself to grow and keep mobility and strength in a sustainable way…not just for now, but for our bodies and minds well into our future. I have this amazing client who is 100 years old. She and I have been working together since she was 94. She’s fabulous and awesome, a total rock-star and an absolute joy in my life, and while there are times when I think she’s definitely super-human and genetics for sure play a huge factor into what she can do, most of the time I’m aware that she just keeps moving even when she’s tired and doesn’t feel like moving. She keeps showing up to her practice on the daily. She keeps riding her stationary bike, and doing her weights and her mobility exercises even when she doesn’t feel like it, and, my friends, I think that makes such a difference. Let’s be honest, there are times when we just don’t want to show up to our movement practices. There are times when we feel like there is absolutely no time in our week or our life to show up to our movement practices. But, my friends, not just our present selves, but our future selves will thank us if we continue to show up even when it’s hard. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista
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 Dear Friends,
After months of debate, I finally got myself a fitbit. Let’s back up a little. I hate having things on my wrists….watches, bracelets, you name it, I can’t handle it. The only things I can tolerate are hair ties because, well, I don’t have a choice in the matter, I need to have a hair tie accessible. So, through the years I’ve purchased various watches, gps’ etc., hoping I would be able to tolerate them...let's be honest, they’ve all gone to the wayside. But of late, I’ve been noticing I need a little extra help, a little outside accountability. I need something other than myself encouraging me to get to bed on time and get enough sleep, to make sure I’m getting outside and getting steps in my day. I need some accountability other than myself. So here I am with my little fitbit…hoping that it’s small enough so that I can continue to tolerate it. Sometimes I think it’s easy to start judging ourselves when we find we need more than just internal motivation, when we need that external motivation also. There are times I think we can start talking down to ourselves, telling ourselves that we should be able to do it on our own, we should remember the beauty of the world around us and use that as our motivation, we should remember how we feel when we feel in control of our food intake, our movement practices, our sleep habits, and use those feelings as motivation. But my friends, it’s not either, or. We can use both. We can embrace all the internal and external motivation that we need to help us through this life. And sometimes we just need it all. Let’s embrace the help we need, and let’s do that with a little less judgment and a little more acceptance. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
It was my wish, as I signed off last week, for us all to be able to slow down and notice a little bit more. Easier said than done, right? Our lives sometimes go in cycles, and there are times and seasons when life is just busy, and there’s not a whole lot we can do about it. I don’t know about you, but in my life it feels like I’m in that busy cycle, with the end of the school year coming up, summer changes and all that entails. I was thinking about that this past week, about my wish for us to slow down and notice, with my own life feeling definitely less than slow…and, let’s be honest, my brain feeling a little too full. But even in those spaces and cycles of busy, I think we can find a bit of time to slow down, to find a little more spaciousness. A couple of nights ago, toward the end of the night, I took a quick walk around my neighborhood and talked to a friend while walking and noticed these ridiculously beautiful peonies that are blooming in my neighbors yard. The other day I sat by the creek with my coffee for a few precious minutes. It was just a few minutes, it wasn’t long, but it was something. Certainly, it wasn't as long a walk as I would have preferred, certainly it wasn't as long a sit as I would have preferred, but I found a little bit of spaciousness in the midst of busy. My dear friends, if you, like me, are in a busy cycle of life right now, I hope you can give yourself permission to find a little bit of spaciousness in the midst of busy. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
It’s easy to see the growth, change and evolution of the deciduous trees in our area, with the yearly life cycle of leaves falling, bare wintering, new leaves and growth in the spring, culminating in the bountiful green leaves of late spring and summer. I was walking past an evergreen tree the other day, as I walked past I noticed the bright green tips on the end of each branch signifying new growth and change in the tree. This change, this new growth, it’s not quite as easy to see as the very prominent life cycle of the deciduous trees in our area, and if you don’t look for it, if you don’t slow down, you might not even notice it. Even so, it’s there. New growth, change, it’s there, it’s happening even when it is not quite as noticeable. But without slowing down and paying attention, you just might miss it. My dear friends, I hope we can slow down a little more this week and notice the new growth and change in our lives. I hope we can see the work that we’re doing and recognize it for what it is. I hope we can cheer ourselves on in the good work we’re doing, even if we might want to do more. I hope you have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about our post from a few weeks ago, about needed change that might be prominent and bountiful, and on the other hand, that needed change that feels like it’s just ground to a halt, like there’s a log blocking our path. The change, if we’re putting in the work, that change is still happening, it’s still there, even if we might be discouraged about the progress. I wonder how it might feel if we really pay attention to those small, minute changes…the ones that are so hard to see and notice, but if we’re really paying attention, are still there in our lives and our bodies. I wonder how it might feel to really notice the small, needed changes in our lives and in our bodies. I wonder how it might feel to pay a little more attention to those changes. I wonder how it might feel if, when we get discouraged about areas in our lives where the change might not look the way we want it to look, how it might feel to really see and notice those other areas in our lives where we are succeeding. I wonder if we could notice ourselves breaking free from that log across our path. My dear friends, our paths to change might not always look the way we want it to look, it might not be as easy or as straightforward as we would like, we might have those logs blocking our way, but if we really spend time seeing and noticing our successes, we might be able to see a little more clearly the areas of growth and change, a path through. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
This past weekend I (finally) got on my bike for the first time this season. I really wanted to get to the Arboretum to see the azaleas before they all went their merry way back into the earth, so I made sure that part of my ride included a trek to the Arboretum. I was certainly not alone in my idea, I’m pretty sure practically everyone in the DC area was walking in the Arboretum on a spectacular spring day this past weekend. I enjoyed my time there and the bright and beautiful azaleas, but as I was riding out of the Arboretum, I noticed this adorable patch of wild daisies, spreading their happy blossoms in a small patch of land. As I rode by them, they just put a smile on my face, their white and yellow blossoms stretching up toward the sun. Noticing, paying attention, and delighting in the normal…I wonder how it might feel in our lives if we really allowed ourselves to notice and delight in the normal, in the every day. I wonder how it might feel if we took stock of the small things in life that are there for the taking if we stop, slow down a bit and pay a little more attention to the beauty in the world around us. I hope you have a delightful week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
This past weekend my younger son and I took a little college visit road trip, as he’ll be a senior in high school this coming year, and colleges are on his horizon. As we meandered around one of the campuses we were visiting, we stumbled upon a delightful redbud that was in full bloom, with blossom nodules covering the tree from top to bottom. It was amazing, this tree, with blossoms and bumble bees all around it. We stopped, took some pictures and simply enjoyed that beautiful and, let’s be honest, really weird looking tree. If you walk around noticing the redbuds right now, you might notice these little blossom nodules growing on the trunk and branches of many trees. Turns out they’re completely normal, a good indication that the tree is on the older side, but other than that totally normal. They don’t seem normal to me though, they feel completely Seussian, something straight out of one of Dr. Seuss’ books. This tree, in particular, felt completely over the top, absolutely delightfully strange. My dear friends, I hope this week we can find delight in something completely normal, in the regular, in the every-day. I hope this week we can be a little more delighted. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
That intoxicating bright and new green of spring…oh my goodness, it is just fantastic. I was driving home a few days ago, as I was driving I was noticing the bright green of spring erupting all around me…it is impossible not to notice the colors, the sounds right now...the flowers, the blossoms, the leaves, the birds…everything is bursting back to life at once, you can practically see the change happening all around us in this area right now…stare at a tree for long enough and you’ll see the leaves get bigger and brighter while looking at it. I was thinking about that change as I drove home. Right now, at this moment in our world around us, the change is impossible to miss. It’s in our faces, it’s there, there’s no getting away from it. But, my friends, in the middle of the summer, when the leaves on the trees are darker and heavier, change is still occurring, it’s still happening…it’s just more subtle, harder to notice, slower…but it’s still happening. Sometimes when we have areas we need to change in our lives it's easy to get excited in the beginning when we can tangibly see the change happening, when it’s impossible not to notice, when it’s easy to see…but if you’re anything like me, we can get discouraged when we are in the middle of needed change and it feels like it’s ground to a halt. It hasn’t, change is still happening, just at a slower pace, in a more subtle way. My dear friends, whether you are in the beginning of change, or if you feel like change has ground to a halt, I hope you can see and feel the good work you are doing, and you can be encouraged that change is happening even if you don’t feel it. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
There’s this tiny, little waterfall in Rock Creek that I pass every so often when I’m driving to a class. Throughout winter and this time of year, while the leaves are not quite out in their full splendor yet, I can see that little waterfall clearly from the road as I drive by…but in a few short weeks that waterfall will be hidden under the bounty of leaves. That little waterfall, that little spot elicits just a ridiculous amount of joy in me when I pass by it. It’s this little pocket of joy while the trees are bare and the leaves are on the ground…in a few short weeks that waterfall will still be there, we’ll still be able to find it, we’ll just have to do a little more searching as it won’t be quite as clear. Sometimes spontaneous joy is in our lives just there for the taking, right? Sometimes we don’t have to go looking or seek it out in order to find and feel that joy…it just shows up without any effort on our part. But sometimes we have to seek that joy out, we have to look for it. Sometimes we have to go searching for that joy, for a little more lightness in our lives. Sometimes that joy might be there, but it might be hidden for a season and we have to search it out to find it. I don’t think either of those options are right or wrong…I don’t think either of those ways to reach joy and happiness are more or less valid, they’re just different. My friends, I hope you can find a little more lightness and joy in your week…whether it’s spontaneous and easy, or whether you have to seek it out and put some effort in to find it. I hope you have a joyful week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
As you might know, cherry blossom time is upon us in the Washington DC area. I don’t know about you, but I try to get immersed in cherry blossoms several times a season…whether that’s getting down to the tidal basin, or taking a walk in the Kenwood neighborhood, or meandering through the Arboretum…I try to take some extra time in the week or two that they’re around to enjoy the beauty of those trees. I find something absolutely magical about being surrounded by these stunning trees, there’s this magnetic pull for me that I can’t fight even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Certainly, there are crowds. Oh, how there are crowds. There’s really no getting away from people no matter where you end up…some spots are less crowded, or have wider streets than others, but at the end of the day, there are throngs of people wherever you are. But for me, personally, it’s worth it. It’s worth braving those throngs of people in order to be surrounded by this beauty that is so very fleeting, this wonder that is here and gone so soon. I think there’s something pretty fantastic about purposely getting immersed in beauty. It might not be cherry blossoms for you, the crowds might add a level of anxiety that makes that experience totally and completely not worth it or even damaging, but I do think there’s something wonderful about being purposeful about finding something beautiful and intentionally spending time in that space. My dear friends, I hope this week you can purposely and intentionally find something amazing, something beautiful…and perhaps spend some time taking that beauty and wonder in. Have a beautiful week, my friends! Love Krista  Dear Friends,
The daffodils are out with a vengeance right now, with whole hillsides covered with these happy yellow flowers, it’s pretty magical. I was walking past a patch of daffodils the other day, thinking about how they reproduce…thinking about how they both reproduce with seed, and also with dividing their bulbs and cloning themselves over the years. You can do absolutely nothing with that daffodil bulb, and year after year, not only will that flower come back, but it will make more of itself. I was thinking of that, and thinking about our movement practices. I don’t know about you, but I think many of us struggle with starting too fast, with putting too much on ourselves when it comes to our movement practices, and then burning out and giving up when we inevitably can’t fulfill our goals. I was wondering how it might feel if, just like the daffodils, we started out with small, manageable and achievable goals…and then built from there. Maybe we started with the goal of moving our bodies 10 minutes a couple of days a week, and then when we established that, maybe we gave ourselves a bigger goal to reach. I wonder how it might feel if, as the daffodils, we gave ourselves permission to build our movement practice over time instead of all at once. My dear friends, I hope this week you can give yourself permission to start out with small and achievable goals, knowing that, with that, you can build something over time. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Last weekend my son and I went in search of snow for one of his school assignments. As both of us love a good road trip, we excitedly hopped in the car bright and early Sunday morning to head toward West Virginia where we knew snow had fallen…it was a lovely drive for about 2 hours, and then a wrench was thrown in our plans. After about 2 hours, my car started having issues. Now, let’s be honest, I can’t say I was super surprised, this particular issue has been headed down the pipeline for a little while now, so I knew it was coming. Even so, it reared its ugly head so much so that we weren’t quite sure we were going to make it home…we gave ourselves a 23% chance as we turned around and headed toward home, and I think, in hindsight and with very little mechanical skill, that was a pretty accurate assessment. Growing up, I only ever had ridiculously old cars and a perpetual premium membership with AAA, so car trouble isn’t particularly unfamiliar territory to me, but it doesn’t matter how much experience one has, car trouble is stressful….and made for a pretty stress-filled trip home. Despite said stress, as I drove, I worked to breathe deeply, to regulate my nervous system, to find calm in the midst of anxiety…and, you know, to stay in the right lane. My friends, breathing deeply and regulating my nervous system didn’t fix my car, it didn’t solve my issues, and it didn’t get me home without breaking down. And yet, while breathing deeply didn’t do any of those things, it did, in fact, make that stressful trip home a little easier. Our movement practices won’t make the hard things in life go away, they won’t solve our problems…but our movement practices will give us a few more tools in our toolbelt when life is inevitably harder and more anxiety-filled than we expected it to be. I hope you have a stress-less week, my friends…and if you don’t, I hope you can breathe a little deeper into whatever stress you might encounter. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s blog post, and about giving ourselves permission to walk our own walk at our own pace without comparing ourselves to those around us…easier said than done, right? This week it’s been hard not to notice the beginning of spring when walking and driving in my area. The daffodils, the tulip trees, the little yellow flowers that carpet Rock Creek's ground at the beginning of spring…they’re all getting towards full bloom. It’s seemed like they all bloomed and opened in the span of a few days this past week. Flowers and blooming have been on my mind as I’ve walked around. One of my favorite things about spring is the way flowers open and bloom at different times…you have your daffodil and tulip tree time, you have your tulips and cherry blossom time, and on down the line. Spring flowers aren’t in bloom all at once, different flowers bloom and open at different times throughout spring. I wonder how it might feel in our own lives if we saw that difference, if we really saw the way flowers bloom in their own time and at their own rate, and we lived into that difference a little more in our own lives…with our kids and family, with our friends…but mostly, with our own selves. We bloom, we open, we walk, we live at our own pace. Let’s see how it feels to be a little more fully us this week. I hope you have an amazing, flower-filled week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Walking our own walk…sometimes it’s hard to do without comparison, without looking at those around us walking at a different pace and judging our own journey. Last week my kids and I hiked to the top of El Yunque Rain Forest in Puerto Rico. It was a beautiful day, high 70’s, rainy, misty, sunny…we had it all during our trek up and down the mountain. We hiked together to the top of the mountain, with my kids at times waiting for their slower mother to catch up to them and me, at times, waiting for them as shenanigans ensued. As we turned around to go back down, we wandered away from each other. One kid, enjoying a fast, solo trip down a mountain, walked on ahead. The other, somewhere in the middle, at times waited for me to catch up. And I, the slower one of the bunch, the more cautious around rocks and roots during the descent, the forever picture taker, I brought up the rear. Let’s be honest, they had to wait a good long while at the bottom for me…and that’s okay, my friends, that is perfectly okay. We get to walk our own walk at whatever pace that may be. It shouldn’t matter how fast or slow those around us are going, we get to walk our own walk at our own pace. If there are spaces in your life where you feel discouraged…maybe you feel like your pace isn’t fast enough or doesn’t match those around you…if you have those spaces of discouragement, I hope you can feel the validity of your own walk, your own pace a little more this week. I hope you can walk your own walk without judgment. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
It’s amazing how warmer weather can help motivate, build energy, entice us to move, change and shift. I don’t know how you’ve been feeling, but It’s been really hard lately to motivate myself to get out of the house, in-spite of a warmer than normal winter. But last week, with the uptick of warmth, I was in the park over a couple of days, enjoying the warm pre-spring weather with so many other people. The ebbs and flows of motivation are real, aren’t they? I found myself, while in the park enjoying the warmer weather, almost having a “new years resolution” time in my head, where I was motivated to shift a few areas in my life that are in need of looking at and perhaps shifting. While it remains to be seen if I succeed at shifting those particular spaces, it was nice to notice and feel the change in motivation in my own body and mind after a few months of stagnation in some areas of life. Whether in the midst of motivation and growth, or still stuck in a little bit of stagnation, I hope we can recognize the validity of where we are in the moment, in the here and now. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
OK, so funny story. Last week I was writing that blog post about trying to find a little more ease and flow in our lives. I was in-between classes while I was writing it, just about to start my next class and eating some soup while I was writing the post. As I was writing about finding ease and flow, and minutes before my next class started, I managed to pour soup all down the front of my shirt and pants. Not super ease-filled if we’re being honest here. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud, it just felt so ironic…the soup all down my front-side just as I was talking about finding that ease and flow in life. Hopefully it’s not soup down your front-side, but I dare say I’m probably not alone in, at times, emphasizing one thing while living the complete opposite of said emphasis. But, you know what, just because we might not be able to embody the changes we’d like to see in our lives every day, doesn’t mean those changes are invalid. Finding a little more ease and flow is just as important even when it doesn’t happen all the time. I hope you have an amazing week, my friends...and here’s hoping you don’t pour soup all over yourself! Love Krista  Dear Friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s blog post, and about the thought of “moving with the horse”....and finding more ease, more fluidity throughout our life. I think all of us go through these phases in life…phases of more or less ease, fluidity. There are times when our schedule, our family life, our outside obligations feel a little more easy, a little more fluid, and there are times when they just don’t. My dear friend calls this space of ease “finding his flow”, which I think is an apt description. There are times when it might be easier to find our flow, and other times when that flow feels near impossible to find. While I don’t think we can completely change those times when life feels a little less than fluid, I wonder what difference it might make if we really pay attention to the times and the spaces in our lives that do feel easy and fluid. Perhaps when paying attention, we can notice the spaces in life where we might be able to shift to create a little more ease and fluidity in more of our life. Let’s be realistic here, probably we’ll never completely “find our flow” in this complicated life of ours, but perhaps we can get a little closer to more ease and fluidity as we walk through our lives. I hope you have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Around this time a year ago I was leading a yoga and fitness retreat in Costa Rica with an amazing group of folks. In addition to our yoga, fitness and eating copious amounts of delicious food, we went on various adventures throughout our week. One of our days of adventuring was a 15 mile horseback ride through the beautiful hills of Costa Rica, crossing various terrain, both easy and pretty difficult, and getting some spectacular Pacific Ocean views during our adventure. As we trotted through the Costa Rican countryside, I stayed toward the back of our pack…I like being able to keep track of my people, and I always feel I can better do so at the back of the pack. Many of us were pretty sore the following day after our ride, with those 15 miles of pretty strenuous terrain showing up in various and sometimes surprising ways throughout our bodies. There were a few in our group, however, who didn’t have that same soreness as everyone else. I was reflecting a few days later, reflecting on my time at the back of the pack watching my people and thinking about the posture of those who were sore and those who were not so sore. The one thing I had noticed while riding was there were some who had a fluidity, an ease…some who were able to simply move with the horse instead of holding themselves more rigidly like many of the rest of us…and with that ability to move with the horse was a bit more ease, less strain as they moved through their adventure and beyond. My dear friends, I hope as we move through our week we can find a bit more ease, a bit more fluidity…who knows what a difference that ease, that fluidity might make in our life experience. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Growing up in California, and spending quite a bit of my childhood among wilderness and trees, I have a great affinity in my heart for the California Redwoods…some of my best childhood memories were spent under redwoods throughout California, and I think those memories deeply influence me to this day. I remember one particular trip when I was a teenager. My family and I, minus my brother who was in college, were walking through the Calaveras North Grove, admiring the strength and stability of those massive trees, admiring the steadiness that comes with that strength and stability. I remember sitting on a bench with my sisters, a bench that leaned back so those sitting could look up at the sky and at the trees above them, and feeling that absolute awe at those massive works of art. I was thinking about that memory earlier this week, and how that relates to our bodies. You know, feeling strong in our bodies won’t translate to an easier life-experience. It certainly won’t change the hardships you might go through or the times when life might feel out of control. Even so, I think building that strength in our bodies helps us navigate those inevitable hardships, those times when we feel out of control just a little better. I think feeling strong in our bodies helps us walk through the hard times in life with a little more groundedness, a little more stability. I think feeling strong in our body helps us remember in a tangible way that we are not only strong in our bodies, but also in our minds and our souls, even when life feels less than great. My dear friends, I hope, this week, you can find a little more time to build strength in your body, mind and soul. Have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
So many tasks just feel easier when we have a friend to help motivate us, don’t they? I’ve been thinking a lot about last week’s blog post and the power and importance of human connection, and how that need shows up in our lives. Sometimes those important tasks in life just feel easier when we know there’s someone else waiting for us to show up. Sometimes movement is easier when we know we’ll have someone to walk or run with, to move with, someone who will be there to help us along. I think it’s easy sometimes to judge ourselves, and to think that we should be able to motivate ourselves without the use of others…but there are just times when we need outside accountability, outside motivation…there are times when our own intrinsic motivation simply isn’t going to be enough. My dear friends, I hope this week you will recognize your own motivational needs without judgment…it’s ok to need that community, that connection. I hope you can give yourself permission to take what you need. Have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista |
Hi, I'm Krista!Krista Mason is a yoga and fitness instructor based in Washington DC. She owns an online studio and loves it! Archives
June 2023
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