Originally posted in 2015 Want to get hurt in life, love, work, relationships, parenting, or physical activity? Compete with others. While in yoga camp, aka yoga teacher training at Rishikesh Yog Peeth in India, one of my teachers stated that injury only occurs when we compete with others in the room. Isn't it the truth?! We look around at the people next to us. What are they able to do? Let me try to do that too. Then bam, a pulled muscle, or we moved our body in a way it wasn't ready for yet. Recently someone asked me if I practice yoga at other studios besides Dharma Yoga Nantucket. I said, of course. (Although, it's rare.) They kept talking about competition and business. I told them that it is not a competition. That's not what yoga is about. They didn't quite understand and went on talking about if someone doesn't like your class they will go to someone else, etc. I eventually said, "there's no competition because there are plenty of people to te

 Originally post in 2016 This post may be a reminder for you to live your life and not a life of someone else's or even by someone else's standards and expectations.    By all senses of the word, you are living your life. You're doing you, right? But the question I am asking is, are you living someone else's life?  And What I mean by this is, are you following someone else's rules? Are you doing what someone else told you was the best way to live or be? Have you adopted a norm that is not your own?  Essentially, being someone else's normal.   I think it's important to ask these questions because we (and when I say we I include myself) can find ourselves going through the motions, living in a routine, or feeling as though we are in a rut. We think "well this is the way life is supposed to be, isn't it?"  "This is how it has always been done". "I was told to be good or happy I need to do this".     Do you ever stop to think, t