Peace

Peace was not something that came easily for me.  Because my mom is a yoga instructor at the local gym and is on the verge of opening her own studio, everyone assumes I am as attuned to the spirit world as she is.  In reality, I feel connected to almost nothing relating to yoga.  Over the years, my interest in yoga and meditation has come and go in varying degrees, but I have never felt the same calling as my mother.  I wanted to love yoga as much as she did, but it felt like too much work to force myself into something I didn’t enjoy.  

I found my peace by trail running.  I needed to feel the sunshine and the ground beneath my feet.  The sweat and work of climbing hills was the only time I felt alive.  Trail running drove my mother crazy for a variety of reasons – I was going to get too much sun, I was ruining my knees, there were mosquitoes in the ‘wild’ and the only thing happening to me while I was running was the fact my hips were becoming tighter by the day.  All I needed to do was find a job where I could run and be outside all day.  I contemplated becoming a professional runner, but the more I looked into training, the more I realized competing at that level would take the enjoyment out of running.  Everything came to a head the day I ran into the mountain lion.