Left of Center

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I spend lots of time teaching other people how to get themselves centered in their bodies. I also spend lots of time centering myself. After taking a moment to center every time I get on my yoga mat, it has almost become automatic.

But every now and then it isn't.

For a couple of days I have been anything but centered. My mind, instead of being with my body, has been with oil slicks, advertising and expansion. The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico just pisses me off. For years I have listened to BP go on about how much effort they are putting into alternative fuels and conservation. Clearly their PR department is greener than the rest of the company. I hope it costs them all of their huge first quarter profits to clean up the mess they made. Unfortunately, it will cost the environment more.

After a few weeks in uncharted territory, I've got ads for my yoga classes placed in a few publications, just in time for the summer vacationers. I'm hoping to fill my classes during the summer months, as well as introduce a few more year-rounders to yoga. It's hard for me to promote yoga classes like a business. I don't teach yoga to make a profit (which is good, because I don't). I teach because I love to share yoga. If running an ad will help me spread the word, then I guess it's the right thing to do. I can probably stop thinking about it now.

Just as I was making the final advertising decisions, I learned about a couple of places that might be in need of a yoga teacher. One isn't too far from home, the other is an hour's ride. Since my Schroon Lake yoga classes are just starting to build, I don't want to abandon any of them, but, if I am going to stay true to my desire to share yoga with as many people as I can, I want to work these other places into my schedule. Trying to juggle classes and still be home when the kids are home is challenging, and my mind is going and going trying to figure it out.

It hit me just how out of my body I am during my first yoga class this morning. I started to demonstrate the poses and realized that my entire left side was tight. Normally, my left side is my open side, so the resistance I felt was completely unexpected. How had this happened without me noticing it sooner? I didn't notice because my mind was elsewhere. This is what happens when I'm not centered.

If you were on your mat this week and spent alittle extra time in a pose while I was distracted, I'm sorry. If you didn't notice, just ignore everything I wrote.

And write to President Obama and your Senators and tell them we need less off-shore drilling and more clean, safe energy. Please.

Business

I really like working for myself, teaching yoga. It's great to be able to decide what hours I will work. I've arranged my schedule so that I can make my kids breakfast and be home when they get off the school bus. I've got a couple of mornings free for housework and errands. I've got afternoons free for triathlon training, writing in my blog and anything else that needs doing. It's a great schedule.

So how come I'm not getting any sleep?

I've been up considerably later than my normal 9:30pm bedtime all week because I've decided I'd like to build yoga class attendance a bit by getting the word out. In other words, I'm going to advertise.

My advertising budget is pretty small, so I won't be doing any four-color, full-page spreads. Just little business directory ads in the local paper, as well as a couple of other Adirondack publications. Oh, and I'm going to have an ad on 40,000 placemats. (They are given by our area Chamber of Commerce to the local restaurants and diners.)

These ads are all business card size or smaller. Not much room to put stuff besides the basics. Which explains why it took me three hours to put together a 1" x 2" ad, right?

Sigh. They didn't teach me how to write ad copy in yoga school. They didn't teach me this in accounting school either. In my next lifetime I will major in marketing before I give up my career to become a yoga teacher. For the remainder of this lifetime I will just have to muddle through.

My ad layouts are done, finally, and I am ready to watch a movie with my fami........zzzzzzzzzzzzz