Kerri On Down The Road

 Relish is a term that I find difficult to define with words. When I think about relishing something, feelings come to mind instead: slowly savouring the last morsel of a decadent dessert, sipping the last mouthful of a perfect cup of coffee, or the pause and acknowledgement between friends of quality time spent together.  What strikes me about these examples is how they all seem to occur at the end of something special, leaving me to wonder what would happen if we could relish tender moments while IN the moment.  I pondered this as I returned home from a relaxed morning dip on the weekend.  Stepping out of my car, I noticed the bird song filling the air, and a daring thought crossed my mind.  What would happen if, instead of busying myself with putting away my dipping gear and moving into the next parts of my day, I took what was left of my post-dip coffee and sat on the front porch for a few moments to relish the start of the day?  There was only one way ...

 I recently listened to a podcast featuring a sports psychologist discussing elite athletic performance. While I do not count myself as a member of that club, I do believe that there are many lessons to be learned about the tools we all possess that can help us become our best selves.   What I found most interesting was the concept of focusing on precision over perfection.  The idea that even for those who perform at the highest levels of achievement, there will NEVER be a perfect execution or perfect performance.  NEVER.  Instead, there can and will be moments of precision, when things are firing at the right times, there is a sense of flow state being engaged, and what has often felt difficult becomes less so.  Not to say that the effort behind it is low or the outcome is mediocre.  The opposite is true.   When we shift our thinking away from focusing on perfection, we allow ourselves some room to move, and our innate knowing of what n...

 I recently returned to the yoga mat, teaching a relaxing nighttime class at a local gym. Over the last few years, my yoga practice has transitioned from a daily ritual to a much less routine occurrence.  Returning to the mat after taking a break has felt timely and like a homecoming.  I am finding myself in a space of peace and grounding, and can reflect on how my body is feeling while engaged in slow and thoughtful movement.  Taking time to reflect on the past year of my life, I can't help but notice how many aspects of my persona feel like they have come full circle.  It feels like I am finally able to open my arms wide enough to welcome in all of the pieces of who I am that I have tried to shed or ignore in the past.  Recognizing that, regardless of my opinion of these traits and tendencies, they are all important layers that fit together to make me whole.  And while I have softened towards these often-ignored parts, I have also started to recogniz...

 I subscribe to the belief that it doesn't matter how many times we fall down in life; what matters is how many times we are able to get back up again.  Because we will all face moments of falling down, there is no way to avoid them.  How we show up for ourselves in those moments defines who we are and how our lives move forward from there.  One of the exercises that I have been introduced to at the gym is an excellent example and reminder of this idea.  Turkish Get Ups are something I had never heard of, let alone attempted before embarking on my weightlifting journey last September.  The first time we included them in a session, I was mystified.  In essence, a Turkish Get Up requires you to hold a weight overhead while you perform six distinct movements that transition you from lying prone on the ground to standing tall (which means twelve in total if you transition back to lying down).  To maintain the position of the suspended weight, you must...

 This past weekend, I took part in a ritual that is somewhat new for me:  I did a deep spring cleaning of my space.  It's not that I never clean my apartment; what I don't usually do is devote the better part of a day to the act of diving into dustball rabbit holes and the like.  As I moved from room to room, scanning for nooks and crannies that needed my attention, I realized I was involved in something more than a physical cleanse.  I was also embarking on an emotional cleanse.  I have often thought of myself as a sentimental soul.  I tend to hold onto things that I am given or that represent special times in my life, and have a hard time parting with these artifacts even long after the moment has passed.  As I moved through my physical space, cleaning and rearranging things, I began to notice items whose importance felt diminished.  Reminders of times that have passed, and whose presence is not necessarily required moving forward.  So...

Where I live, springtime has had a rocky start.  Although it is not unheard of for us to experience snowstorms in late March or April, they feel out of place and annoying when they occur.  We are now moving into a patch of more "typical" spring-like weather, complete with early flowers poking their heads out of the cold earth, and trees throwing forth their blooms, and it has made me think about patience. I wonder if these plants feel impatient to start their growth cycle in the spring.  If they are sitting below the Earth's surface, feeling annoyed by the ongoing weather delays preventing them from doing their thing and bringing colour to otherwise dull-looking spaces, or if they simply take it all in stride, knowing when the time is right, they will be called to start their magic.   Humans also lose patience when our sense of divine timing is thrown off.  Speaking for myself, I absolutely feel frustrated when something I feel has taken "long enough" to oc...

 If you are like me and tune into astrological forecasts and downloads, you will know that we have entered a time of looking at relationships in our lives and evaluating the ones to keep and the ones to let go.  These can be relationships of a romantic, friendly, or job-related nature, and I have also been feeling a pull towards evaluating the relationship I have had with myself. I say "have had" because I cannot deny that in the past months, I have been experiencing a shift in perspective around the nature of this relationship and the aspects of it that I feel ready to shed. Have you ever taken a moment to sit and think about the adjectives that come to mind when you ask the question "Who am I?"  Perhaps you have never asked the question.  It is a powerful one, and an insightful exercise to experience.  What came up for me were some very well-worn and outdated narratives that I have carried around for too many years.  When discussing this with my therapist...