I am still processing the recent wedding of our daughter Hailey to the wonderful Eddie that we managed to pull off in the Tuscan hillside here in Italy. It was nothing short of spectacular and I am in awe of everyone that made the trip and celebrated with us. Grazie Mille.

Oh man. Africa. First it was the people and then of course the elephants, the lions, the giraffes...but it was marveling at our EARTH that just broke me open. The colors of the sky, the magnitude of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and the endless colors of plants and animals.

I am leaving on June 1st for Africa. I have never traveled there before, and I cannot believe I am leading a yoga retreat to Tanzania....it is a real pinch me moment. As I put together this retreat, which includes a week of solo travel for me prior to the retreat, I was only nervous about one night, the first night there. The logistics of traveling to Tanzania and then on to Zanzibar are of course complicated. I tried not to worry too much about that first night. When I said the whole itinerary out loud to the Hubs, he went back to that arrival night and was like "um, that is nuts."

I just returned from Panama, and I noticed along the roadside clearly defined rows of trees everywhere. Some trees were hacked off at the top and just looked like a rugged fencepost and others had straight branches jutting out at all angles. The trees create a fence that sometimes has barbed wire strung between, or the trees were so close together it didn’t require wire in between. In my yoga classes since I have been back I have used the image of the trees/posts. The ability to plant and replant my feet and legs into the earth, to pull my thigh bones back, and to notice the space between each planted foot.