Head/Heart: April 2015.

The beginning of 2015 feels like aeons away, yet it's only May. I really hit the ground running this year, and four months into full throttle has been challenging and confronting—but I'm riding this flow, this frenetic time, just accepting it for what it is without getting too bogged down in negativity or frustration. If there's anything I've learnt from years of being a busy person with a Type A personality, it's that being stressed about being stressed gets me nowhere.

What I'm grateful for:

The new friends and connections I've made this year.
It may only be May, but already I've made new friends in every facet of my life from yoga teacher training to the creative world. I love finding "my people".

Discovering yoga 3 years ago.
3 years doesn't sound like very long, but when I fell in love with yoga, I went to class twice a week, then 3 times a week, and then 4 times a week. I have a far better relationship with myself, my body and the world around me thanks to my practice, and I chose to do teacher training to deepen that relationship. I'm really excited about where this will take me in the future, knowing it will only lead to more contentment. All my life I've felt a great deal of internal suffering, but these last few years are the first time where I've felt a great weight lift, where I've become my true self (and accepted that for what it is).

Quite simply, choice.
While we here in the first world spend our time arguing about petty things, we sometimes forget that people elsewhere don't even get to have a say in what job they have, what food they can feed their children, what clothes they can wear. Before you get caught up in your next argument with an Internet troll who only lives to make you angry, remember to be grateful for the very sobering and simple fact that we can choose what to do with our life and choose the people we spend our life with.

What I've been thinking of:

The projects I keep putting on the back-burner.
At the beginning of the year I made a promise that I would take on less work in exchange for having time to explore my photography in side projects that have no real "goal" other than to simply enjoy my craft and experiment. All creativity needs space to grow, and jumping from one thing to the next without reflection is not at all conducive to that process. I haven't yet begun or even been able to give much thought to these projects, which is a little disappointing, but I'm being kind to myself—I'm juggling a lot at the moment, after all.

What I'm excited for:

Teacher training retreat.
In July we'll be having our four-day yoga teacher training retreat. It will mark the halfway point in our course before we "graduate" in September. It'll be great to get to know everyone better, to have fun with our practice, to meditate and to have time away from life to remember what it's really all about.

What I'm doing:

Studying anatomy & physiology.
In the interests of being original and not mentioning work or editing photos, I thought I'd mention this instead. We have an exam coming up next weekend for the skeleton and muscles. I'm not sure how many people realise that certified yoga teachers must have a thorough understanding of the body, especially muscles and bones, in order to safely teach. Students from all walks of life will come in with various injuries, and we do have to know what it means so we can make sure we don't aggravate their injury or hurt them during class. Not only that, but it's so interesting to know which poses can be calming on the adrenals, which poses can be good for increasing your cortisol levels, and so on.

Practising headstand and forearm balances at home.
In class you don't sometimes get to workshop the more complicated postures (our teacher usually won't experiment with challenging poses if there are too many new students in the room), so instead I like to play at home. I've just gotten to a stage where I can hold a partial headstand, so it's only a matter of time before I'm strong enough to get into the full pose. Perhaps I'll include a yoga photo or two in my next Head/Heart.

What I'm reading:

Blogs & teacher training manuals.
It will surprise absolutely nobody to know I haven't done much reading since the start of the year with the exception of my study material for teacher training and the occasional blog during my lunch break at work. It's extraordinarily interesting, but I don't have much to say about it right now, so I thought I'd share a few of my favourites:

• The Design Files
• The Road is Home 
• The Fresh Exchange

News about Nepal.
As an empath, I am really careful about what news I read because it really strongly affects me. I dwell on it in every second, and it weighs down my heart to the point I cannot sleep. The earthquake tragedy in Nepal (not to mention the Bali 9 executions, the Baltimore riots and the torrential downpour here in Queensland that left 5 people dead) made for a very heavy news week last week—in one of my earlier Head/Heart posts this year, you may recall that I actually mentioned trekking Nepal was high on my destination list for next year. The loss of so many lives not to mention so many historical structures is really heartbreaking, but in times like this you're reminded there is still hope, and there are still so many good people in the world.

Below: days whizzing past, April 2015.