Final Post: Gratitude

onthemat • May 2, 2016

It’s hard to know where to start with this final, “On the Mat, On the Road,” post. It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue my Blog, “Burma and Beyond,” nor continue to share my Blog with On the Mat’s Facebook page, but it does bring the official OTM Blog (www.onthematyoga.com) to a close today. Earlier […]

It’s hard to know where to start with this final, “On the Mat, On the Road,” post. It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue my Blog, “Burma and Beyond,” nor continue to share my Blog with On the Mat’s Facebook page, but it does bring the official OTM Blog (www.onthematyoga.com) to a close today.
Earlier this year, before I knew about my “once in a lifetime” opportunity in Burma, I was slated to be OTM’s next “30 Days of Yoga” Blogger. One of the struggles I was envisioning was anonymity because it’s pretty hard for me to hide my voice, written or spoken. Thus, the good fortune to blog, as Susan in Burma, was an incredible gift to me. I didn’t have to hide my voice, and my experiences were all the richer because you were, and are, with me on this trip. (It’s far from over. I don’t touch US soil until May 13).
Articulating how important On the Mat is to me would be a loquacious tome, so I will be as succinct as possible. From the time I took my first class, with Vicki in 2006, going through a gut wrenching divorce, determined to stay strong for my daughters, but uncertain how to do that, I knew I’d found my home. When I experienced the letting go of grief, through tears and breath on my mat, I knew that yoga would save me, as its saved so many others.
Today, each time I walk into the studio, I feel at ease, and through this journey, I’ve been able to share my love of yoga and OTM with so many wonderful people. For me, “And now the practice of yoga” is synonymous with “And now the practice of yoga at On the Mat.”
It’s been pure joy to wear my OTM logo throughout Southeast Asia, asking people in airports, nunneries, beaches, and outdoor yoga studios to please take my picture. I scanned the Internet for pictures of Ramsay in the same OTM shirt, but I couldn’t find one. Instead, I believe I found something better, the picture of our OTM Sangha the day the proverbial baton was passed from amazing owners, Vicki and Bar, to Ramsay. No OTM shirts, but it doesn’t matter. This picture represents the heart and essence of OTM, and it includes (symbolically) all of you.
Ramsay, with the deepest gratitude for sharing my evolving journey with OTM.
Namaste
Susan
p.s. If you’d like, you may continue to follow my journey on my FB page https://www.facebook.com/susan.reynolds.946 or (eventually) www.abclegacy.com. Ramsay will continue to share it on the OTM FB page for a bit as well.
Please stay tuned on Facebook .. on May 10 when I will be teaching yoga with OTM’s Tara Rachel Jones book, “It’s Time for Yoga,” to 25 Thai girls in a flower house in Chiang Rai. You can read about this the NGO founded by Jane McBride (OTM yogis, Lucy and Melissa’s, sister-in-law) and Patricia Zinkowski: www.friendsofthaidaughters.org . More to follow on that as I continue traveling ‪#‎BurmaandBeyond‬.

On The Mat Yoga Blog

Heart~ Day #7 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • May 3, 2020
“There is a light in the core of our being that calls us home—one that can only be seen with closed eyes; We can feel it as a radiance in the center of our chest. This light of loving awareness is always here, regardless of our conditioning. It does not matter how many dark paths we have traveled or how many wounds we have inflicted or sustained as we have unknowingly stumbled toward this inner radiance. It does not matter how long we have sleepwalked, seduced by our desires and fears. This call persists until it is answered, until we surrender to who we really are. When we do, we feel ourselves at home wherever we are. A hidden beauty reveals itself in our ordinary life. As the true nature of our Deep Hear is unveiled, we feel increasingly grateful for no reason—grateful to simply be.” —John J. Prendergast, PHD, The Deep Heart

SUN!~ Day #6 (Week #4)

By Linda Malcomb • May 2, 2020
Seems like it’s been rainy, windy, dreary for eons. Which may have helped us shelter inside a bit more. I remember reading years and years ago in a Seth book that weather can be influenced, and even created by mass human emotion. Why not? We are far more powerful than we currently acknowledge, and science is beginning to validate many phenomena that had seemed inconceivable before. Those seemingly endless days of “bad” weather seemed congruent with the emotional tone of covid her in New England. And now SUN! Glorious, warming, invigorating, hope-filled Sun! Today I will be outside basking and gardening and thanking. And I’m sure the whole neighborhood, and most of New England will go outside, stand with our faces to the sun and breathe a huge healing breath of joy. And maybe the collective energy of that will resonate out across the word as a promise of brighter days to come.
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