When I wake up in the morning and look out at our rural views, I automatically think, ‘Another perfect day in paradise.’ But it’s not ‘another’ day. It’s today. It’s now, and the truth is that there’s much that’s changed in the landscape if I look more closely. For instance, I see that our local king tides have filled the channel between Scotts Creek and our nest door property.
Daniel and I do our mindfulness meditation practice, much as we did yesterday and the day before. But my mind drifts to the same incomplete to-do list that I was thinking about last time I meditated. I catch myself, and right now, right here are sensations – the crazy wave-sounds of cicadas, for one thing. How could I have missed them?
It’s New Year’s, and I create my visions and goals much as I did last year and all the years before. What will make this a new year? Who do I need to be right now to savour a quality of freshness?
I go out to the Yoga Shed and practice the yoga which has become my routine for over four decades. I do a downward-facing dog pose but I’m distracted by thinking about what I’m going to next, or perhaps the wash load that I can hear as it finishes its final cycle. Then mindfully, I do a dog pose that isn’t just another dog pose but it’s the only dog pose. This is the one I occupy with total proprioception, meaning I’m sensing the individual parts of my body, where they are in space, and at the same time, I’m calibrating the amount of effort I’m using.
Can I sustain my awareness? Well, perhaps not completely. That’s why it’s called practice.
Writing posts for this blog is a kind of now-training, too. I’m sitting here with all this white space beneath this line. Do I know what words will fill it, or even if I will choose to fill it? Not till the creative juices comes down the pipe and I’m here to collect them. Right here.
In case you’d like to inject a little pizzaz into what may have become a ho-hum downward dog pose, here’s the three-legged version:

 
On the other hand, if you’d like to incorporate a little passivity into your pose, here’s the lazy dog version:

This one can be comfortably done by simply flopping over the back of a soft, stuffed chair. Or, as shown here, you can do it on the back of a chair by padding the top with a folded blanket or two. You can also fold your arms and rest you head on your hands. Enjoy!