“But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’.”
Matthew 22:34-40
May my words be your words.
Once your law was burden, but now you make it simple.
Once your rules were words, but now they are a person.
Your precepts hang on love, written on our hearts.
We are your tablets of stone,
We are your commandments made flesh and sewn upon bone.
To follow you is to enter deep into a womb,
Then to press forth through water and spirit.
We emerge coated with law, engulfed by love.
Law and love were once estranged and split in two.
I am so honored to have been featured in Rejoice, a multicultural Christian magazine!
May 12, 2010
1. Where were you born?
White Plains, NY
2. Proudest moment?
Giving birth to two beautiful boys
3. What color best describes you?
Yellow
4. What was your first job?
14 years old walking down the street to open the Italian bakery at 5AM on the weekends and holidays!
5. What inspires you?
Teaching Holy Yoga and watching my students move their bodies into prayerful expressions of surrender, love, and gratitude.
6. Describe yourself in one word.
Genuine
7. What is your favorite charity
or cause?
Water Missions, Children Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Pattison’s D.R.E.A.M. Academy
8. What is your favorite food?
Pizza, does chocolate count?
9. Place you would like to visit?
Israel
10. What’s your advice to young adults starting out in life?
Discover your gifts and nurture your natural talents and whatever you do work with all your heart, mind, and soul unto the Lord and all things will fall into place.
11)What’s one thing the people would never guess about you?
I had my eyebrow and nose pierced with short crazy blonde hair
12) If you could invite 3 people living or dead to dinner, who would you invite?
My husband's (Casey) father (Will) who passed away when he was 13, including my boys Liam and Grey, so Casey could introduce us to his dad.
13) Where did you go on your last vacation?
Sleigh riding and meeting our new niece Amelia in Iowa
14)Where do you live? What’s your favorite thing about the city in which you live?
Charleston, SC. Cobblestone roads and the beach
15)How did you meet your spouse?
It all started at The Mustard Seed, a restuarant in Charleston and the name could not be more befitting, for he was a chef and I was a customer and when my aunt made the exit for the restroom he got on one knee at the table and asked me to coffee. To his surprise I was engaged, shortly married thereafter and a year later working at the Mustard Seed going through a divorce as he was too... the seed of love took some time to grow, for I moved away to Florida and Honduras. While I was in Honduras, we started a romance overseas, he flew to Honduras, proposed on top a mountain in the Mayan Ruins, we eloped, tattooed our rings, and have two boys!
16)What do you like to do for fun?
Yoga, explore new parks with my boys, swim, write, kickboxing, love coffee dates with my girlfriends.
17)What is a quality that you most admire in a person?
Authenticity
18) How many children do you have?
Two boys
19) What’s your personal motto?
Not mine, but I live by it... "A happy heart is a good medicine." Proverb 17:22
Submitted by ChristinaMroz on Mon, 06/14/2010 - 4:18am.
The bible is the very bedrock of Holy Yoga but often it seems so difficult to understand. Hopefully this document will help weed out some of the confusion for you.
I love surprises! Stick with me, and I'll tell you about a very pleasant one I encountered today.
I literally just finished teaching a Chair class, which includes a couple of students with VERY limited mobility. To be honest, I frequently find myself dreading this class because I get frustrated...not with them, but because I feel they don't get as much from the class as other students. So, today I spent a little extra time in prayer to get ready for class. (I'm finally "getting" the advice I kept hearing at retreat to just open up and let God teach the class.)
After my prayer time, for whatever reason, I decided to pull out my $1.00 discount store rubber balls for the Chair Yoga class. I had no idea what we'd do with them, but knew that God would show me when the time came. Sure enough, we did lots of fun things with them and ALL of the students really had a ball (pun totally intended!). We squeezed them between our knees, rolled them under each foot (was great for helping one of them work on muscle control - a huge challenge for him), rolled them under both feet at the same time, lifted them overhead to stretch, and balanced them in one each hand with out-stretched arms. The best part was that they were so into the props that they forgot to be self-conscious, and they LET GO!
The key points I want to make here are:
Don't forget to ask God for his plan for class.
Don't be afraid to try new things...of course, be safe and don't get too crazy!
Watch your class, see what they can and can't do, and adjust accordingly.
Props are never a sign of weakness. Rather, they are enhancements.
Draw the air in through your nose and bring it down into your belly space, expanding it like a balloon.
Now let it out slowly.
Like, super slow.
That breath is life.
That breath is a gift.
Your next one is not guaranteed.
Breathing is something that we do without thinking. It is a simple in and out exchange of air in our lungs. We usually don't pay much attention to it unless we are somehow deprived of it.
Yet breathing is something that we can control, to a certain extent. We can choose to hold it, release it, restrict it, free it, make it shallow, make it deep, make it fast, make it slow, make it quiet, or make it noisy. We have some choice in what we do with that little gift of life we receive every few seconds or so.
Even down to our very breath, God instilled in us a choice of what to do with the life we have been given. We get to choose what we do with our breath, with our life, and with our connection to God. God is in our breath because life is in our breath and God is life.
But, as believers, we have also been given a deeper kind of breath - the breath of the Holy Spirit. In Hebrew, the word 'ruach' is translated as breath and as spirit. The Spirit of God is Ruach Elohim, so it could also be translated the Breath of God. With this different sort of breath, comes a different sort of life. Everlasting Life.
Take that breath again.
Draw it in nice and slow through your nose, all the way down to that belly space.
Feel the fullness of that breath.
Now let it out slowly.
Feel the hollowness without it.
You have received the breath of life for your body and you have received the Breath of Life for your spirit. You have a choice about what you will do with your breath, with your life, with your spirit. Will you hold it, release it, restrict it, free it, make it shallow, make it deep, make it fast, make it slow, make it quiet, or make it noisy?
Savor your next breath. Find the life inside of it. Feel God inside of it. Connect to the Ruach Elohim within it.
It reminds me of a scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, "A Walk to Remember". I know it's a Mandy Moore film, but it's based on a Nicholas Sparks book so it's good. She plays a Christian girl dating a boy that goes to church with his mother, but doesn't yet believe in God for himself. My favorite scene is when he asks her how she can believe.
She says, "It's like the wind. I can't see it, but I can feel it."
Ruach is sometimes translated as wind, too. It is air and spirit in motion. Don't we create a kind of internal wind when we breathe? So, that's how I picture the relationship that I have with the Holy Spirit. It's like a wind that I create inside of me. I can't see it, but I can feel it.
I, for one, choose to take my breath of life and make it deep and noisy and free. I choose to draw it out and experience as much of it as I can.
What will you do with the gift that is your next breath?
