One of one of my favorite yoga teachers posed the question during a guided mediation earlier this month: “are you a human being or a human doing?”

We live in a culture of that glorifies the need to stay busy. The need to always be doing something. And often it is doing more than one things at once: Listening to a podcast while cooking or cleaning. Doing a yoga pose and checking emails. Talking on the phone while running errands. Yes, I am guilty of all of these. I get the urge to always be doing something, and I get caught in a cycle of feeling guilty of I am not staying busy or doing enough. Even the few minutes spent waiting in line at the grocery store, somehow I find myself on my phone. I often get so caught up in the doing, the checking off of tasks, that I forget what it is like to just be. To be me. To just exist in my body. To be a human. Because at the end of the day, isn’t that what I am? What we all are? Human beings?

This year I want to BE. I find the best ways to BE include a sense of embodiment: going for walk or run outside, listening to my breathing, or practicing yoga. I want to notice each moment as it passes by. I want to appreciate each day as it follows its course through space and time. What are we teaching our future generations when we never have enough time? When we are always doing a thousand things at once, but never one thing with our full attention? When we are too busy to stop and look at the sunrise or sunset? When we don’t stop to smell the crisp scent of a winter storm on the wind?

John Denver asks these same questions in his lyrics: “Do you care what’s happening around you? Can your senses tell the changes when they come? Do you see yourself reflected in the seasons? Can you understand the need to carry on?” I want to answer with a resounding YES to each of these questions. I want to be a human BEING. Join me.

Happy New Year. Happy New Beginnings. Happy BEING.

Love & Light,
Kristin