Author: Ki McGraw

Today, as I road trip from one location to another, I recognize the need to stay open to the different requirements. Different states, as well as within each state, local rules and regulations govern. Personal needs of individuals also must be accommodated.

In Hatha Yoga practice, safety is essential as we transition from one posture to the next. Safeguarding structural integrity with conscious breathing insures the intentions established for each practice will be manifested. This habit has far reaching consequences, potentially smoothing every transition.

What helps you deal with change? How smoothly can you move from one location to the next, from one posture to the next? Ki to Happiness transits smoothly.

Adaptation, and flexibility, always come in handy. Adjusting to circumstances evolves us. No point in resisting what is inevitable. In this awareness, yesterday I live streamed a Hatha Yoga Center Facebook posting in advance of today.

Walking in the woods, chanting 108 times to Ganesha, entrains my vibration to be free from obstacles. In the present environment, with 71 days left until the election, doing so is empowering. I vote with my breath, and my feet. Every step and every breath, in the direction of truth, light, love, and peace.

What obstacles would you like to be free from? How can you best maintain your vibration? Ki to Happiness votes early and often.

Along the way in traveling, it’s hard to continue to feel open to other people. We may come to the point of feeling like shutting down, withdrawing and retreating. Sometimes that is the best thing to do. Especially in this environment of political discord and viral pandemic.

Polyvagal theory offers us an option of working with our nervous system in such a way that we may be able to choose social engagement. Of course, respecting appropriate guidelines in our specific areas. Fortunately, yoga practices naturally stimulate the ventral vagal nerve. This brings us out of fight or flight, rest and digest, or collapse. Another option is then available.

How is your nervous system? Are you able to socially engage under these conditions? Ki to Happiness chooses supportive practices for our full range of possibilities.

Continuing to respect the rules and guidelines of reopening in different locations requires acceptance. These boundaries do not reflect a rejection of who we are. Very important to not take personally what is impersonal.

Respecting our own personal boundaries helps. Navigating acceptance and rejection internally, as well as in relationships gives us practice for these issues in larger circles of interaction.

How do you personally handle boundaries? Do you see the corresponding reflection in how you accept other’s boundaries? Ki to Happiness knows no limit to loving, and respects boundaries from this fullness.

Traveling in this present environment, masked, changes the way we interact with one another. We lose so much of nonverbal cues without the ability to see the nose, mouth and jaw. Eyes become the focal point. Important to have eye contact.

Looking from my soul into another soul is deeply intimate, potentially. What is seen may be surprising. Sending love and connection is completely possible anyway, across the veil, mask, or aisle.

Are you comfortable looking into another’s eyes? Can you send love and connection across the divides? Ki to Happiness smiles and breathes with eyes wide open.

In addition to challenges regarding the various rules and requirements of the viral issue, travel also upsets the digestive system. With climate and time changes, different foods and water, constipation and diarrhea often result.

Yoga offers us guidelines and tools to assist. Changing my eating and sleeping patterns before travel helps me synchronize with the new location. As does the cleansing practice of Nauli. Using abdominal muscles to massage the digestive organs assists. I will be demonstrating that momentarily on today’s Hatha Yoga Center live steaming group page effort.

How’s your gut? Anything hard to digest on any level? Ki to Happiness assimilates the best and evacuates the rest.

Traveling yesterday, I found three different opportunities to live stream supportive yoga practices. As this is the “summer of the road trip“, perhaps others will benefit from these offerings, wherever you go.

They certainly help me. As do many more which I will continue to show from the road. Join me there as a Facebook friend, or on Hatha Yoga Center live streaming group page. Today, I will next clean my sinuses in support of my immune system as I demonstrate the use of the Netti pot.

What do you need on the road? Where can you find some privacy in and few minutes to tend to those needs? Ki to Happiness has taken this show on the road.

Bags are packed, my ride to the airport is certain. Continuing to safely start to reopen here will no doubt be a different experience than the other locations where I will be. So I pack my flexibility, my acceptance of things I cannot change, and my serenity first.

As I look around my world I’m about to depart from, I am full of gratitude. Mostly, I have wanted to thank all of those who have assisted me in the coming to this now. My cats, family, friends, students, clients all enrich my life with purpose and meaning. Truly, I thank you, also, dear readers, for sharing your time, your attention, and your deep thoughts on all of these topics.

How easily do you leave? What is it that you will be returning to? Ki to Happiness puts the good in goodbye.

I’m curious what I will find next with my upcoming travels tomorrow. We continue safely starting to reopen here. In other areas, different programs are in effect. Helps me to release judgment, and pack plenty of acceptance as well as masks!

I am a champion packer, having spent a lot of my life with one bag at least half packed. Perhaps my best tool, is to start early. And always, to call upon assistance from the traveling saints.

Did you travel domestically this summer? Are you a good packer? Ki to Happiness sees us all as travelers here, most needing food and shelter.

Weather forecast indicates that the heat dome is likely to send temperatures close to 100° here. Starting to safely reopen will begin with the windows. Little air conditioning in the PNW.

Being raised in St. Louis, I love the heat. I remember frying eggs on the sidewalk, beef roasting in pots in parked car windows, playing in the hose, the taste of water coming from its long coil.

Do you like the heat? What memories does it bring up for you? Ki to Happiness stays cool in the shade now, remembering.