The pioneers didn't have iPhones and they were pretty happy.

Melinda and her sweet strawberry-blonde granddaughter after church.

The beautiful actress Gweneth Paltrow made a fun comment on an interview several years ago, and it has stuck with me. She said that when she was young and had a question that needed answering, she would call and ask her grandparents. But today the wisdom of our grandparents has been surpassed, and kids just ask Google.
     I've sat at many family events in recent years where almost everyone was staring at little devices, watching videos and Googling the longest chicken racing contest or whatever. My kids don't have "devices" with the exception of an old-fashioned cell phone to call for a ride after golf practice, but it's amazing how savvy they are about the world because of Google. They're very tuned into who the latest artists are, what clothes are trending, who won the Voice last week and so on. We're all so attuned to this global chatter with texting and tweeting and Facebooking and YouTube. It feels like our world is really big and we're all up on the important happenings of the world.

     Yesterday my daughter had a sweet 13 year old friend over for the afternoon, and I noticed a trend that I have been aware of since leaving the city for the South. While too many people even in small town America are overly plugged in, the culture in general seems to shun electronics. Slow internet and a lack of cell towers adds to the situation. Little Bailey wasn't savvy about any of the celebrity happenings or trends or songs. Instead she repeated again and again a little phrase that made me smile: "My family does (this), and my family does (that), and my family doesn't believe in doing (this or that)." Here is a smart, savvy teenager in designer jeans with a bright mind whose culture is still instilled the old fashioned way, via her family. Her parents are actually parenting, and her grandparents who live across the street are actively grand-parenting. I had another friend last week actually ask what I meant when I said that I would Google the restaurant. I had to explain that it meant to go look on the internet for information. It was a totally new term for my friend. She doesn't text more than once a week either, doesn't even have a touch screen phone, so I've had to learn how to have actual conversations. And I'm beginning to wonder if this savvy city girl has replaced the knowledge of my parents and grandparents with a handy little device. I haven't had to call my dad to settle a Scrabble controversy, or ask my mom for a recipe for a long time. Maybe I should.

The girls won a Nabi at the Lockhead Martin Science Night. 

Guns and camo make great gifts from Santa.

It's funny how hunting season leads right into Christmas. I didn't realize that this could create a humorous scenario until yesterday. Brody opened door number 16 on the  Trader Joe's chocolate advent calender, purchased on our last short vacation into civilization. The small square of chocolate was embossed with an ornate reindeer, a swirling caricature of antlers poised atop his head. Brody held the chocolate out at arms length, made a little gun with the chubby toddler fingers of his other hand, and shouted "SHOOT that deer! Ready, aim, fire. POW!" The he smiled and told me that he got 'im. Oh my! Welcome to Arkansas. I still had a bit of deer roast wedged in a back molar from Sunday dinner which had eluded my cinnamon floss, so I could only giggle at the irony of it all.

        Below are some real life photos of the real life toy aisles in the stores of our small town. I didn't photo all the camo chapsticks, basketballs, panties, dishes, Christmas ornaments, dinner plates, and blankets, so just let your imagination fill in the gaps. Duck Dynasty has a whole collection of skin care items in lieu of the Burt's Bee's gift packs my yuppie Wal-Mart in Arizona carried. It all begs the question, what kid WOULDN'T want their own Deer Blind and Assault Rifle? Makes it easier to shoot the reindeer down. 

This will go great with all the antlers my boys think they're hanging up in the dining room.

I couldn't find a Rainbow Loom, but there were 100 different guns.

Barbie is so yesterday!

Sunday dinner, thankfully no shiny red nose on this one.

Home sweet home.

A cold but pretty day outside my neighbor's window. Brrr...

Home Sweet Home

There’s a place that I can run to
And it’s never far away
Inside that warm fire’s burnin’
Every time I see your face

Home sweet home
Always comin’, runnin’ to the arms I love love love
Home sweet home
So thankful for the hearts that make it up
1 2 3 4 5 6…..

Homes ain’t built by bricks and mortar
It ain’t bound by walls and floors
Leave your lonely at the fencepost
Walk your love right thru my door
Children gather round the table
Little voices in their seats
Sayin’ grace for what’s before us
Life is good enough to eat !

When I was a little girl
I sent my wishes up to heaven
Prayed someday they’d all come true
They stirred around up in the starlight
They feel down and became you, you , you, you, and you, yes!

-by Katherine Nelson
http://www.katherinenelson.com/

Mr. Brodes waiting for the cousins to join him for dinner.

Former vegan's sweet little ballerina kills her first deer!

Daddy didn't let her pull the trigger, but she spotted the
herd and picked the target deer.

When I was a city girl, I ate an earth-friendly, responsible, fair-trade, organic, local, non-hybridized, sustainable and indigenous diet which was appropriate for my genetic ancestry. I first read "Supersize Me" as a young mom and swore off McDonald's for nearly a decade. Once you catch the healthy living bug, it turns into a buttery slope into veganism, then RAW. My husband remembers well the summer when I converted the whole family to vegan rawness, throwing out all the milk and bread and replacing it with a kitchen full of seeds, nuts, veggies, and legumes at various stages in the sprouting process.He kept the local pizza place in business for a few months until I got hungry and bloated and tired of running a full-time sprouting operation. I ate a COOKED organic cracker with CHEESE one day, and that was the end of raw veganism. The mostly meatless organic lifestyle continued for the next 16 years, and I attribute our family's great health to the blessing of healthy food. But moving to a small town in Arkansas immediately cut off my supply of roasted tomato hummus, fresh raw goat milk, and non-GMO corn chips. I went into a tailspin this Fall, dropping literally down to 104 pounds because I couldn't get organic free range chicken or heritage grains at the only grocery stores in town. Wal-Mart at least carries organic kale and the occasional pomegranate for the Lockhead Martin employees, but that's about it.

     I made a conscious decision to eat some meat as long as it was humanely sourced and free of harmful chemicals. We raised our own little flock of backyard chickens for a while, but it was hard to enjoy slathering barbecue sauce on Roosty and Rosie. When I made the choice to practice appreciative and responsible carnivorism, I never dreamed that my sweet little ballerina would be sitting in the deer stand all day in 26 frosty degrees with my husband searching for dinner one Saturday. She volunteered to go with him, filled up the thermos with cocoa, washed her lavender scented curls with anti-human-smell shampoo, tossed her camo outfit into the dryer with some dirt odor wafers, and hit the woods for a long, cold, dark adventure. She came home covered in blood and pine needles, doing a little dance and singing something about she can bring home the bacon. She said "who needs Jack the Giant Slayer when Chloe the Deer Slayer is in the house?! Boo ya!" Somewhere deep down a few remaining vegan cells in my brain sort of screamed out silently about the cruelty of reveling in the loss of such a beautiful life, but it was short lived. A million small rodents and bugs and other critters are inadvertently slaughtered with the grain harvest on our huge family farm every year, and this beautiful deer lived a clean, organic, peaceful life before dying quickly under the oaks. I have a deer roast in the fridge waiting for Sunday dinner, and my daughter knows completely the cost of acquiring what will be a delicious meal. Good job Chloe and Jason!

Chloe being a girly girl in her pre-Arkansas days.

You will survive!

I snapped this photo for my kids thinking they'd never see me again.

Last year I almost died. That's one of the reasons I became so stressed out that I sold my pretty city house and ran away to the country. Scared the heck out of me! After two years of mystery illness, I underwent abdominal surgery to remove a mystery tumor (totally benign lump of nothing), then came down with a mystery tummy bug which ended up being advanced c-diff. They call it a superbacteria. There's nothing very super about having it. 50,000 people died from it in the U.S. alone last year, and I was almost one of those victims.

     My husband took me to the ER to get "checked out" a few days after my surgery, never imagining that I'd be there for the next two weeks. At one point in my hospital stay, the doctors came in with the chaplain to tell me that they were worried because the medicine hadn't worked, and I was too weak for surgery, and every organ in my body was shutting down, and I was likely to die that day. I still need therapy from that meeting with my doctors and the hospital chaplain. So scary.

     I knew I was dying, and it made me so sad that I became overcome with negative emotions. I truly didn't see any way to survive, and in that moment the spark went out of me. I lost my will to go on. Hope was gone, sucked up in the words of the experts. I sat in a dark room drowning in dark thoughts with nothing to comfort me but my narcotic drip.

     Then I started to pray, and I came up with some crazy ideas. I pushed the call button and begged the nurse to bring me some colored dry erase pens. Two hours later she brought me one dried up black pen. I told her I needed colors, "All the colors!", ASAP. She gave me more narcotics but then went off shift, and I had a new nurse to harass. She brought me red. The next nurse found me green and purple. I wanted pink and yellow, called my husband and begged through the narcotics to have him run into Target on the way back and buy me some dry erase colors. I was so weak, I hadn't been out of bed for 3 days, knew I couldn't stand, had an abdomen full of fresh scars. But I stumbled to the dry erase board with my collection of markers and started to draw the bouquet of flowers on the shelf. I'm not an artist, and narcotics don't help, and my body trembled and shook and sent shocks of pain everywhere from the act of standing. I made myself do it for 5 minutes. Then 6 minutes an hour later. I cried the whole time, but I drew and drew. A few blue petals, then a nap. A cluster of grapes, then a long nap. It took me the whole day to finish the board, but at the end of that day I was still alive, and I was alive the next day too. I sat in my bed for a few more days with a smile, admiring my hospital masterpiece, feeling the tiny flame of life burning inside again.

     I remember telling my husband good-bye, telling him that I knew I was dying for sure. One year later, it's still a surprise to be alive. There was one half of one awful day when I couldn't even picture getting myself out of the mess I was in and seeing another day. But obstacles can be overcome, bodies can heal, and life can change. It just takes a tiny spark to light a bonfire. I survived, so will you. Just find a way to re-light your spark if it's gone out. Life will get better I promise.

   

     

Color therapy. It made my nurses happy too, but not my doctors.
They just wanted to write important stuff and I hogged up all the room:)


The Candle

I dim, I dim,
I would go out if someone blew.
I did not,
I guess I'm stronger than I knew.

Carol Lynn Pearson


If you have a great story of surviving, please share in my comments section. 

Candles in Missouri.

A short post about doggies.

classic vintage Southern in the home of my favorite 91-year-old.

Tutu Broome is the sweetest puppy in the world. When I told Mr. Broome that I wanted to come photograph his loyal companion, he drove her straight to the local puppy salon for a trim first. He wanted his little lady to look her best. 

Do you have a cute puppy? Send me your photo, my kids will pick the top 5 to post.

Sisters.

"Smile and act like you like each other!"

There's something about this time of year that makes me wish I was a kid again. It's not about the presents, the magic of Christmas that doesn't quite carry into adulthood, or the great holiday cartoons like Charlie Brown and Frosty. I wish I could be a young girl again so I could giggle under the Christmas tree with my sisters while rattling unopened gifts, feeling the shapes of lumpy sweaters through the wrapping paper in anticipation. What I wouldn't give to spend one more rainy Christmas morning sitting with our three pairs of little bare feet on the heat vent in the living room floor, warm air filling our long home-made nightgowns and blowing our hair as it wafted through our flannel collars. My sisters are on the other side of the country now. They're still Yankees up in the Northwest and Utah, so far away. And we're adults now, so there's a good chance we would argue about politics or parenting styles over our mashed potatoes and be disappointed that Christmas isn't what it was when we were little.
     The Downton Abbey writer was on a pre-Season Four special last week. He talked about the precarious relationship that sisters share, and how sister relationships are always romanticized onscreen. He wanted Lady Mary and Lady Edith to show what sisterhood really looks like. So they hate each other! Sometimes in my childhood home, sisterhood looked like rival gangs facing off over a territorial dispute. It was more "oil and water" than "bridge over troubled waters". But we loved each other and still do.
     My Grandma lost a sweet little sister to appendicitis before the Depression. She missed little Joanne all her long life, taught all of her descendants about her, passed her name and tender trinkets and memories down to the next three generations. Joanne's tiny baby ring is one of my greatest inherited treasures, a ring from a long-gone aunt dead almost a hundred years ago but kept alive in a sister's heart. I never heard about Grandma's lost loves, or lost fortunes, or lost dreams. But I knew the talents and passions and personality of that lost little sister. It makes me think that years from now I'll be sitting in a nursing home calling out for my sisters, unaware that poor Jason ever existed. Sisters are special and I've been so blessed.

Home-spun sugar and spice lip balm in Branson.

Easy oatmeal and honey protein bars.

Sometimes I just do a half batch in an 8X8" pan.

Oatmeal and honey protein bars.

1 1/2 c. honey

2 c. nut butter (peanut, almond, cashew etc.)

1 c. vanilla protein powder 

4 c. rolled oats

Stir together honey and nut butter with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add protein powder of your choice and stir until well mixed. Add oats. Mix thoroughly and spread in lightly sprayed 9X13" pan. Chill well; cut into squares and serve. Enjoy!

I like to use DoTerra Trimshake, or vanilla whey powder, or Garden on Life Raw Meal Shake. You can also use Carnation Instant Breakfast powder instead.

This is a versatile recipe which can be bedazzled. Substitute some of the oats with:

-chia seeds

-sunflower seeds

-dried berries or cherries (I LOVE Trader Joe's freeze dried blueberries!)

-nuts

-coconut

-chocolate chips 

-wheat germ

-sesame seeds

My kids wrap these in a piece of foil and carry them to school as a recess snack. I love to control the ingredients and the cost. Homemade is always best, and it's even better when it's this easy. Enjoy!

Silver Dollar City Christmas tree Branson, Missouri.

Gossip is like chewing on soggy used toilet paper.

Grand Canyon restroom toilet.

It was an icy, rainy day at the Grand Canyon last Fall, while we were still living in Phoenix. Too cold to enjoy ice cream, too foggy to see the Canyon very well. We mostly just hopped from one beautiful lodge to the next, venturing to the edge of the canyon for a few photos between downpours. That weekend trip became expensive thanks to the hours our kids spent in the gift shops during the storm.

     As we drove home later I asked what the kids would remember most. They unanimously shouted that they would remember the undrinkable toilet in one of the lodges. Not the rain, or the glorious natural wonder of the Canyon. The thing that hit them the most was the silly toilet with a sign warning people not to drink the water.

     That toilet taught me a life lesson. Isn't it obvious that, reclaimed or not, one should NEVER under ANY circumstances attempt to drink? Who would be clueless enough to even try? Why the sign?! The kids and I had giggled in the stall just imagining that some park ranger had at some distant time caught a tourist, maybe armed with a long Slurpee straw or something, sipping from the pot. 

     I think gossip and unkind words are just like that Grand Canyon toilet. We all know that voicing negative opinions about our fellow humans is as dirty as chewing on soggy used toilet paper. It feels dirty and gross. But too many of us do it anyway. My mom used to recite a poem that I think she made up when I was a teenager. It goes like this:

"What a little thing the tongue is,

But what damage it can do,

By whispering little secrets

And things that are untrue."

We shouldn't need a warning about tearing others down any more than a public toilet in a restroom that sees 2 million tourists a year needs a "DO NOT DRINK" sign. But sometimes it's nice to have a reminder. Be kind, with your heart, hands, and tongues:-P

The rain broke just long enough to catch a double rainbow.

Brody and Chloe love each other.

A Plea For Tolerance

If we but knew what forces helped to mold

The lives of others from their earliest years—

Knew something of their background, joys and tears,

And whether or not their youth was dear and cold,

Or if some dark belief had taken hold

And kept them shackled, torn with doubts and fears

So long it crushed the force that preserves

And made their hearts grow prematurely old,—

Then we might judge with wiser, kindlier sight,

And learn to put aside our pride and scorn. . .

Perhaps no one can ever quite undo

His faults or wholly banish some past blight—

The tolerant mind is purified, reborn,

And lifted upward to a saner view.

Author unknown

Before and afters are so fun! Old house new house.

Beautiful mango wood table. I grew the fairytale pumkins
in my organic Oregon garden.

Chicken fried squirrel with the missionaries, Arkansas style.

A house is just a box.

The plans that made my life happily ever after. We sold it after 10 rainy months.

Such a pretty kitchen.

"I feel satisfied that there is no adequate substitute for the morning and evening practice of kneeling together in prayer--father, mother and children. This, more than heavy carpets, more than lovely draperies, more than cleverly balanced color schemes, is the thing that will make for better and more beautiful homes." 

Gordon B. Hinckley.

I remember the day the FedEx man slid that monumentally important white cardboard tube into my hands. I ran into the kitchen of our gloomy Oregon rental house to find a knife with which to frantically sever the top of the tube, and then stood breathlessly watching the long beautiful parchment scroll slide elegantly out with a "swoosh". I rolled it out right there on the tacky powder blue tile of that shabby rental house floor. This piece of parchment was about to change our lives. It was our first glimpse of what KBH Architect Tucson had masterfully designed for us, and we poured over that floorplan on bare knees on the kitchen floor until our feet fell asleep. After years of living in architectural mediocrity, we were about to realize domestic nirvana. Jason and I wept, giggled, marveled, and dreamed over that buttery piece of paper for the next 6 months.
     A long time ago a friend said "A house is just a box." He said it was what you filled it with that mattered, but the box was really inconsequential. I thought he was just too dumb to understand the subtle nuances of Bauhaus design or appreciate the beauty of Portugese limestone. At that point in my life, I really believed that a house was earth-shattering. I believed that once that gorgeous mid-century modern inspired dream home was done, all the roads in our life would be paved with gold.

Men+babies=my favorite thing:)
Happy times in a tiny house that I didn't love.

    The day we moved into that new house, I was in the cardiac wing of the OHSU hospital in misery. Kind of anticlimactic. The house didn't change the fact that Oregon receives an unfair amount of rain, it didn't change the shift in the economy that squeezed our finances. It didn't make my kids happier, bring more romance to my marriage, or calm my frazzled nerves when dealing with 2 boys under the age of 2 with major health problems. In fact, I felt like a slave to that high-maintenance monster. It took teams of housekeepers and upkeepers and daily work to polish all the quartz and the 3,000 square feet of espresso colored hardwoods, vacuum the other couple thousand square feet of plush carpet, and shine the 87 massive windows. Just turning off all the lights in the 6 bedrooms, two offices, etc. took a while. And really, I was still just me. My life was still the same. It turned out that my friend was right, and a house is just a box.
     I wish that I could've seen a couple years down the golden road while I was pouring over those house plans. I would've either laughed or cried to see my future. We're currently scrunched into my mom-in-law's tiny 2 bath home in the back woods of Arkansas for a YEAR. No limestone floors here! But this afternoon while I blog, my teenagers and husband are playing a heated game of Rook with a new friend. Our tummies are full of buttermilk pancakes, and we all have smiles on our faces and in our hearts.
     We have been sold a pack of lies by realtors who tell us that life is all about LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION. It's not true. Life is about INGREDIENTS! The house is just the container.
     If you're working overtime, saving for that perfect little Craftsman home or whatever so you can finally entertain your friends in style, or soak in luxury in your new Italian soaking tub, stop it. Look around at the place you call home and realize that it's what and who it holds that matters. Fill it up with good friends, cinnamon candles, good times, prayer, and important memories. A house is just a box.

Hannah's hair-do was a group effort, and cousins are awesome. No house necessary for this memory.

Sunday afternoon in Arkansas.

Aspiring virtuosos at Cullendale Church

“One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.” ― Richard Rohr 

Mr. Brodes has the giggles.

Tis the season to shed your extra leaves.

Rachelle the wise.

My sweet sister Rachelle Krohn is my personal Oracle of Delphi. Her wisdom is the variety that prompts emotional action. I can sense her thinking at the other end of our long-distance phone calls bridging one side of the country to the other, hear her softly breathing that last long breath before she gifts me her words of advice in answer to my questions. Her voice is like honey, and her words are like a hearty crock-pot meal, filling and warming as you chew them over. I call my mom for sympathy, but it's Rachelle the yogic sage that I call for real answers and insight.
     As I sit on the front porch today watching the leaves drift from swaying trees I am prompted to share her Advice on Grounding.
     I had called to tell her about some stress I was going through, all the things that our family has going on this time of year. She inspired me to action immediately with her thoughts.
     First, every other living thing on the planet is in sync with the earth. Animals don't decide to eat strawberries in the dead of winter, or to host a big Winter Solstice party during hibernation season. Only modern humans have the luxury of going against natural flow. But we still have an innate instinct to follow the flow of the seasons, and can experience great peace from doing so. I can't count how many of my Facebook friends posted photos of Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes at the beginning of the cool season, and just as many will post photos of tan legs in swimsuits at the beach enjoying ice cream cones at the start of summer. We crave cinnamon candles and Christmas music in the winter, pastel skirts and lemonade in the springtime. This is the manifestation of our old buried instincts syncing us with the earth.
     In the Autumn, we modern humans tend to rev up instead of doing what we should be doing, slowing down and shedding our leaves. Why do trees drop their leaves? So they can pull their energy into their roots and trunk and really ground themselves in preparation for the cold season. After this seasonal grounding, they're ready in the Spring to burst with blossoms, leaves, fruits and berries, and new limbs.
    Rachelle told me to do some yoga poses where I stood like a tree and grounded the bottoms of my feet into the bare earth, imagining to let everything else go except my foundation. She instructed me not to take on the new projects I was thinking of starting (and instinctively resisting, thus the stress), and to stop some of the activities I had already committed to. She then told me to get out there and get grounded. I've taken it seriously and have slowed down the pace of our busy family, watching movies in pajamas on Friday nights with friends, donating hand-me-downs that were clogging up the girls' drawers, simplifying our evening dinners. You don't have to be a lush, flowering tree heavy with foliage all year long. Follow your instincts even if you have to force yourself, and strip your routine down to the minimum for a short season. Write down all the things that can be pruned back for a while. You'll be ready to conquer the world and take on new projects in a few short months. The stronger the roots, the taller the tree. Thank you yogi Rachelle!

Mr. Broome's autumn garden of turnip greens.



How to Do Tree Pose in Yoga

---

If you’ve ever tripped off a curb or slipped on a patch of ice, you probably understand the benefit of having a good sense of balance. Practicing balancing poses in yoga, such as Tree Pose, will help you gain both physical and mental steadiness and poise.

Tree Pose improves focus and concentration while calming your mind. Its Sanskrit name, “Vrksasana” (vrik-SHAH-suh-nuh), comes from two words:

• “Vrksa,” which means “tree”
• “Asana,” which means “pose”

The word “asana” can also be translated as “seat.” Many of the original ancient yoga poses were seated postures. As the practiced developed, standing poses were introduced, but the seated, meditative aspect still remained. Tree Pose, with its calming and meditative benefits, is like a standing variation of a seated meditation posture. Keeping calm and focused while balancing on one foot will teach you to sway gently like a tree in the wind, steady and sure no matter what the outside circumstances may be.

Benefits of Tree Pose

Tree Pose stretches the thighs, groins, torso, and shoulders. It builds strength in the ankles and calves, and tones the abdominal muscles. The pose also helps to remedy flat feet and is therapeutic for sciatica.

Like a tree, extend your roots down and blossom your arms up toward the sun. The stronger the roots, the taller the tree.

Baron Baptiste

Most notably, though, Tree Pose improves your sense of balance and coordination. Regular practice will improve your focus and your ability to concentrate in all areas of your life, particularly during those times when you might normally feel “off-balance.” This pose has a positive impact on the grace and ease with which you approach all circumstances, even outside of your yoga class. It teaches the benefits of a meditative state of mind, and is a gentle reminder that you can bring calm focus and clear-headedness to all situations, not just when you are practicing a seated meditation.

Cautions

Due to the balancing nature of the posture, do not practice Tree Pose if you are currently experiencing headaches, insomnia, low blood pressure, or if you are lightheaded and/or dizzy. Those with high blood pressure should not raise their arms overhead in the pose. Always work within your own range of limits and abilities. If you have any medical concerns, talk with your doctor before practicing yoga.

Instructions

1. Begin standing in Mountain Pose (Tadasana), with your arms at your sides. Distribute your weight evenly across both feet, grounding down equally through your inner ankles, outer ankles, big toes, and baby toes.
2. Shift your weight to your left foot. Bend your right knee, then reach down and clasp your right inner ankle. Use your hand to draw your right foot alongside your inner left thigh. Do not rest your foot against your knee, only above or below it. Adjust your position so the center of your pelvis is directly over your left foot. Then, adjust your hips so your right hip and left hip are aligned.
3. Rest your hands on your hips and lengthen your tailbone toward the floor. Then, press your palms together in prayer position at your chest, with your thumbs resting on your sternum.
4. Fix your gaze gently on one, unmoving point in front of you.
5. Draw down through your left foot. Press your right foot into your left thigh, while pressing your thigh equally against your foot.
6. Inhale as you extend your arms overhead, reaching your fingertips to the sky. Rotate your palms inward to face each other. If your shoulders are more flexible, you can press your palms together in prayer position, overhead.
7. Hold for up to one minute. To release the pose, step back into Mountain Pose. Repeat for the same amount of time on the opposite side.

Modifications & Variations

Practicing Tree Pose can be a great way to gain balance, grace, and poise — for beginners and advanced students. Try these simple changes to adapt the pose to your current abilities:

• If you are unable to bring your foot to your thigh, rest your foot alongside your calf muscle or the ankle of your standing leg, instead. Rest the toes of your raised foot on the floor if you need extra assistance balancing.
• If you are very unsteady, try practicing the pose with your back against a wall for extra support. Alternatively, you can place a chair next to the standing-leg side of your body and rest your hand on the back of the chair for extra support.
• For a greater challenge when your arms are overhead, close your eyes. Practice balancing without using the outside world for reference.

Tips

In order to fully gain the meditative benefits of Tree Pose, it’s important to stay grounded and calm in the pose, while still maintaining alignment. Here are a couple of tips to help you stand up as tall as a tree:

• Take your time. As with any balancing pose, it’s often easier to come into the pose slowly and with awareness. If you enter the pose quickly, you are more likely to lose your balance, which makes it more difficult to re-gain your balance once it’s been lost.
• Mountain Pose (Tadasana) provides the structural foundation for Tree Pose. Thoroughly review the instructions for Mountain Pose before practicing Tree Pose.
• Work the pose from the ground up. Balance your weight entirely across your standing foot — across the inner and outer ankles, big toe and baby toe. Then, bring your awareness to the shin, calf, and thigh of your standing leg. Find alignment in your hips, tailbone, pelvis, and belly; and then in your collarbones, shoulder blades, arms, and neck. Extend the pose through the crown of your head. When you are ready, you can then raise your arms overhead.
• Never rest the foot of your raised leg directly on your knee or at the side of your knee joint!
• To help with balancing, bring your awareness to the center line of your body — the vertical line that runs directly through the center of your head, neck, and torso.
• Although regular practice of Tree Pose will tone the abdominal muscles, weaker abdominal muscles can make it difficult to balance. Add extra core-strengthening work into your practice to help with balancing (and with the rest of your standing poses!). Some examples of core-toning poses are Boat Pose (Navasana) and Plank Pose (Kumbhakasana).

Root Down to Rise Up

By regularly practicing balancing poses, you gain concentration, focus, poise, coordination — and a steady and balanced mind. Tree Pose connects you to the earth, as you root down through your standing foot. As you balance in the pose, feel the slight and gentle sway of your body. Just like a tree in the breeze, you’ll grow in confidence, standing tall as you face life’s challenges with grace and ease.