Author: Ki McGraw

Welcome to the Thanksgiving week. I’m so glad we have this time in our country when we pause to reflect on the many blessings in our lives. In my own private country of Self I honor Thanksgiving daily.

I am thankful for your eyes on these words. I am thankful for Hatha Yoga Center community, near and far, new and old. I am thankful for all of these practices ever nudging my consciousness toward that which lives is all of us.

How does your Thanksgiving week look? What can you give thanks for now? Ki to Happiness is thankful for Us.

In first coming to Seattle in the 80s, I was unable to see the mountain. When I moved here in the 90s it escaped my view for years. In driving to the mountain, I still couldn’t see it. It’s vastness engulfed my experience to the extent that it was not visible.

During my third trip to India in the 00s I was blessed by many yogis, Sadhus and Rishis (seers). Sleeping in a large communal tent on a cot during the Maha Khumba Mela, I saw Mount Rainier! She came to me! As if the vision of the Holy Ones had entered me, I could see what they see.

What are you looking for? What will it take for you to open up to find it within yourself? Ki to Happiness seeks That which lives in us.

All writers agree that revision is a necessity. It’s completely normal that the first effort is rough, that’s why it’s called a rough draft. In revision, we refine that roughness.

In yoga practice, we also refine our roughness. We bring the breath into areas that have otherwise been neglected, stressed or misaligned. In doing so, we revise our embodiment.

What rough draft needs revision in your life? How can you best refine yourself in the direction of your desired embodiment? Ki to Happiness revises daily with yoga and writing.

We awaken into a world that has just gone through the longest lunar eclipse in over 600 years. This brings us into the awareness of all that we may wish to release from our heart, finding it unworthy to remain there. Now there is more room for all that is completely worthy to fill the heart.

Some of us are working on a more personal interior level of individual issues. Others are working on the social exterior level of collective issues. Together, may we use these energies to release personally and planetarily all that is unworthy so that we may go forward.

Have you been working more on the individual or the collective level of consciousness? Can your heart open to all that is worthy personally and collectively? Ki to Happiness awakens to the open heart worthy of collective peace.

Our IT guy got the website back up! It brings me to the awareness that we are not alone. We need others every day in order to do what we do. I need someone’s eyes to read these words.

My clients need me. Our students need us. And yet I also have need of both clients and students. This is not codependency. It is mutual interdependence, based on the connection between and among us all.

Who needs you? Who do you need? Ki to Happiness needs to thank you for our mutual interdependence.

Hatha Yoga Center website has been down for two days. Soon it will be back up. We are as open as always since 1977. Thank you for recognizing that, and continuing to participate online on our Facebook page.

Those of you who know us are aware that we are practicing yoga and teaching yoga every day in the traditional way with or without digital aspects. I’ve been blessed to have traveled to India in order to learn traditional Hatha Yoga in its birthplace. No Wi-Fi in the Himalayas when I was there. No mats, straps, or blocks either.

In this digital age, how well do you adapt to technological challenges? Can you continue on your efforts without digital interface? Ki to Happiness practices and teaches with or without props…digital or otherwise.

I shared a post of the old writing titled Desiderata yesterday. It was the first spiritual writing that captured my attention as a child. I used to have it hanging on a plaque in my psychotherapy office.

This morning I heard from another psychotherapist. She was inspired by the work I offered and shifted in that direction as a career path. She saw my post and let me know she still has the plaque hanging in her office decades later. I’m so glad she still appreciates the gift all these years later.

What was the first spiritual writing that moved you? Does it still work for you? Ki to Happiness continues to “Go placidly among the noise and haste…”

Hatha Yoga Center is warm and safe and lovely inside. Our adjoining live in space is similarly intended to support our yoga practices. It is lively and fresh, with healthy plants and cats, inviting aromas, and sunlight reflected from the neighbor’s building through our large windows.

When outside is stormy, cold, wet, dark, littered with human waste, and homeless encampments restricting our ability to enter and exit, it helps to focus inside instead. All the years of practicing meditation strengthens my ability to choose where I place my focus. After calling 911 to take care of the encampment, meditation flowed toward gratitude for both, inner and outer.

Hows’s your insides? And the outside? Ki to Happiness thanks those who police the outer so I can work my inner.

My open window rattled in the night with each gust of wind. The cats came close and wanted me to get up. We all remember the same kinds of sounds that came in the Spring, although they were from a different source.

I let the cats experience the full force of the gusts before securing the windows. We all felt the calmness after, our breath, like the wind, also calmed down. We are safe.

How is your breath? Can you let it calm down as you recognize that you are safe? Ki to Happiness is safe enough to feel the full force of the gusts of life.

I finally heard back from my old supervisor’s in-laws. When she and I met nearly 40 years ago we worked at a hospital together until setting off in our private practice association. Daily contact and mutual support continued for years.

My efforts at contacting her last year resulted in silence. Now I have learned that she’s having short term memory issues. She doesn’t remember the name of the hospital where we worked. Interesting to consider 40 years as short term.

What do you consider short term? What’s long term? Ki to Happiness reMembers.