I had the same conversation with 3 people in two days – everyone feels overworked, exhausted, usually fighting some nasty illness, completely out of balance. The holiday break in December is forever ago and warm-weather chillin’ is still a long way off. Instead it’s year-end, tax time, RRSP season and and winter and it’s nose-to-the-grind-stone all the way.

My yoga buddy Michi said – how do you do it Corilee? You work full-time, teach yoga and you’re a Mom. I said – hey don’t bother getting impressed with me I just had a meltdown yesterday! I’m plenty human too. I had been going non-stop on Sunday a.m. from the time I got up at 7:00 a.m.. And when my son went down for a nap I was planning to do sit-down work and instead I ran off screaming to my bedroom and shut the door. I just couldn’t do any more, I was done, toast, kaput. Instead I relaxed and did fun things and it was exactly what I needed. And of course the work ended up getting done later, because it was no big deal once I was ready to face it.

I congratulated my yoga class last night for taking time for themselves and coming to the last of 8 weeks of classes. And someone said “sure, yoga feels great, it’s totally selfish!” And I said – now why is *selfish* a bad word in our culture? How can yoga be *selfish* when it helps us keep our nutty overworked lives in balance? How can something be *selfish* when it helps us recharge our batteries so we have more to give to the people and things that are important in life? You can’t get water from an empty well. It’s a necessity.