I thought a lot about the hundreds of smaller accomplishments that are wrapped up inside the bow of a college degree. Classes attended, papers written, exams taken, projects completed. Planning the course of study. Making decisions. Moving in. Moving out. Earning money to pay for it. And on, and on, and on and on.

To graduate from college, you have to choose yourself—again and again. And again. More precisely, you choose your future self, in a thousand small and significant ways.

I take refuge in love.

This was a mantra I repeated to myself in the past few weeks, a period of spiking anxiety.

A mantra adopted aspirationally. As mantras sometimes are.

Because sometimes I do not. Take refuge in love, that is. Rather, when I feel the weight of the world or the voices of my fears amplify, I turn away from what I know to be true. I curl up into a little ball inside myself and forget that I am loved. That I am love. That there is nothing in this life that matters except that love.

I try to attend to the many details of this human life with as much skill and grace as I can muster - while not losing sight of the big picture. The truly important stuff. There’s a saying Bill and I often repeat to each other: “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” (Stephen Covey).

In the spiritual teachings of Yoga – as in many traditions- death is not the end but a shedding of the body. Here’s an overly simplistic summary: The Yogic view of the soul is that we are all one connected spirit or soul, called Brahman. We have individualized, localized versions of the soul, called Atman. Atman expresses itself as “Lexie” or “Meadow” but that is not who we really are. It is like an Avatar we use during our embodied time(s). Who we really are, is timeless, formless, and Divine. So shedding the body? Not a tragedy, especially if, during this life, we have come to really understand and connect with Brahman.

Most impactful has been drilling deep into the “why.” Yoga was not developed over thousands of years as a tool to sculpt a nice butt (though that may be a nice side effect for some of us). Rather, it is a set of tools to help us refine our state of consciousness. Skillfully applied, these tools have the power to help us be whole, be held, be loved and be love.

We are all students, and we are all teachers. In this continuous dance of our soul’s journey, we are co-creators of our collective experiences and wisdom.

Look around you. The people you spend the most time with are the ones you've chosen to walk this path alongside. They are the ones you teach and learn from, forming an intricate web of shared knowledge and growth. As my favorite quote from Ram Dass goes, "We’re all just walking each other home."

We're seven! The number seven is associated with luck and magic in a lot of different traditions. I've never really marked our anniversary before but this year, I'm full of nostalgia and gratitude for the many, many people who have built our sweet community. At Yoga Garden our secret sauce is love. And maybe some luck and magic, too.

On the yoga mat we train a lens on our bodies and this can be uncomfortable. In my years as a yoga studio owner and teacher, and simply a person in the world, I have come to understand how fraught our relationships with our bodies can be.

Tom Thompson’s life is about waking up from the trance we live.