stillness, movement and setting sails again.

There are moments in time that feel filled with the potential of something bigger and more powerful than any one of us could manage on our own, like the dark clouds rolling in before a great storm when the air fills with electricity and ozone; the wind picking up leaves, pollen and dust as a sign that something formidable is on her way. The last few months have held that energy for me.

I have recently spent many a night alone in our beautiful little courtyard looking up at the moon and stars, listening to trains pass nearby along the Hudson river, wondering at where the pulls of this time would lead our family, what direction we would head and where we would ultimately land. Underneath these whirlpools of possibility (and, at times, to be honest, terror) are the wonderings and wanderings that I hold closest to my heart: those questions of who I am, what I can possibly offer this world, how I can be the best mother and partner and friend, and how best to facilitate the movement of my family in the direction of growth and evolution together.

When we arrived in the US in January 2020 from Switzerland, I was so excited to be back; filled with dreams of building something substantial and fulfilling here. We were almost magically lucky to find a house and move just two weeks before the pandemic spurred international lockdowns. We have savored the time together as a family and the peace in our surroundings we have been afforded through this massive shift enacted on society. Like everyone, we have also been challenged in many ways, most notably and personally the hit my business has taken through Covid.

I have spoken often and intently in recent times about using our greatest obstacles and challenges as teachers and opportunities to grow. I believe in this concept wholeheartedly through both my own experiences as well as the great leaps I have seen students and clients achieve through their own struggles. It is incredibly inspiring… and still, it is never easy to face hard truths.

steeped in stillness

I had a wild ankle injury almost six weeks ago. It stopped me in my tracks in every aspect of my life. I could not work, could not do anything around the house, could not go on my daily walks, could not cook or clean or garden, could not get Miya ready for school in a timely way, walk her to the bus or go and pick her up at the end of the day. I was like a baby in some sense. Helpless and immobile.

I have not been so motionless maybe ever; except perhaps the few times I have done 7 or 10-day meditation retreats where it was “my choice” to be still… and as I reflect on those retreats, the hours of motionless sitting and silence were all imbued with my tendency to push myself in certain directions.

I have been fortunate in my life to explore and understand a few things about “pushing”. When we push for something, we simultaneously tend to ignore where we are moving away from and/or the limitation we seek to press forth into. I am well-versed in the art of pushing, and it has taken a lot of slowing down, looking deeply, and asking important questions to begin to unravel my instinct to push. Even in the process of rehabbing my ankle, I have had to note when I pushed too hard and learn to back off and allow things to unfold on their own time. Again and again I was reminded that I could do nothing but sit and be still. And wait. And see.

In the stillness, a lot came up: all that I had been moving for years, decades even, to avoid. All the discomfort that sat there staring at me in the home and business I had worked so hard to try to bring to fruition; all the imbalances I felt between “work” and “home”, “businesswoman”, “teacher”, “seeker”, “mother”, “wife”, “artist”, and even “daughter”; they all showed their faces at different times. So many topics and elements of my life that I hadn’t taken the time to look at or had actively avoided could no longer be ignored.

We ignore what we do not wish to see or know. The gno in ignore comes from gnosis: to know, which has also been tied to the sanskrit jna - to know. For me, ignoring is an active form of not knowing. We see, but we do not look further. We close the door on the space where our perception reveals something too uncomfortable to feel or explore.

Sometimes, if we are lucky, life presents us with no choice but to face these places which we have actively ignored, forces us to open the door and look at what we have been running from. I was fortunate to be sat in this position, even though it was incredibly painful to do so. I fought it at first (more than one night binge-watching Netflix). But eventually I stopped avoiding and sat long enough to allow the flood in.

And flood, it did.

manifesting a home and a studio

When I found our current home, where recenterspace is now housed, we were still living in Zürich, Switzerland. I was zealously hunting online for the PERFECT home that would also contain my business. My imagination ran wild with the idea of living near nature, yet close to a town with shops and restaurants. Tucked away and quiet, yet a hop on a train to the New York City I still longed for at that time. A place where our daughter would have the beauty of trees, wildflowers and grass, cultural diversity, the freedom to grow and expand her mind, and a way for me to run a business where I could still be close to her.

I spent hours scavenging the real estate listings online, and added this quirky house to our list to see that fall before we moved back.

Beach Road was the last house we looked at on our tour in November 2019. I had loved the idea of having a home, a house of our own. Each property we saw brought images of a future life filled with gardening, teaching, building community, raising our daughter. I was enamored with the fantasies, and everything we saw excited me in some way. And then, there was Beach Road.

I will never forget the way I felt when I walked into the room that would become the studio for recenterspace. I was alone; Matthias, Miya were still behind me, and my jaw dropped. It was so beautiful, so perfect for what I had been seeking out, it could not possibly be real.

Yet, it was.

We fell in love with this house in every way imaginable, and our time here has been so precious. It has been the PERFECT home for what I envisioned, and yet it has also been an enormous amount of pressure. That pressure gave me sleepless nights before we signed the contract on the house and it intensified greatly when the pandemic that no one could have predicted forced me to keep my doors closed for a year and a half after moving in.

This house has become a sanctuary for all of us, and I am hopeful that it provided that kind of peace for those who entered its doors to practice and work with their minds and bodies. I was able to build a space that I felt had everything I ever wanted in a studio. A beautiful space to practice, with the intention of community and gathering and sharing. And all of the tools one might need to work with body and mind in a way that honors the integrity of exactly where we might find ourselves. Where we are not pushed but invited, and where we gently approach our challenges with patience and steadfastness.

While I write, I stare out my window at the vibrant purples of the just-blooming wisteria canopy over our courtyard and the flash of the red cardinal perched in our thick and healthy rhododendrons. This place has a dream-like quality that I’ve shape-shifted through for the last three years. For the first whole year I could not believe I lived here. The beauty and tranquility it houses is unimaginable. And we have gotten to inhabit those qualities fully in our time here.

And yet, the pressure never ceased. It ebbed and flowed, but ultimately it grew in intensity as time passed and the need to “succeed” grew. It morphed as I realized that Covid didn’t stop when lockdowns ended; instead it has become insidious in the ways that it has exponentially changed and inhabited many of our minds, our behaviors, our ways of seeing the world, our ways of treating “others” and the unknown. I could write chapters just on the personal journeys I’ve been on in my attempts to understand what I have seen arise around me and inside of me. Suffice to say, where resilience and curiosity did not spring forth from the challenges of the last three years, fear and trepidation and stagnation have made a home.

letting go

While I sat still for the last five weeks, it became ever more clear that our visions; all the love and sweat and tears we had poured into our home and my business… ultimately we needed to let those things go like the reins of a horse that did not want to be broken. The force was too strong to fight any longer.

So it is, we are moving on. We do not yet know where we will land, but based on certain changes in Matthias’s work in addition to the realities we are facing here at home, it is most likely we will land overseas in Europe again. It is likely those changes will take place in the next few months. It is likely that my teaching and offerings here will not extend further than the summer and inevitable that recenterspace will close her doors.

For me, the stillness has been such a gift and an opportunity despite how painful it has been to face these truths. I am made deeply aware of the steadiness of my dear partner, Matthias. I am steeped in the brilliance of the jewel of light that is our daughter and the time and space I have been given with her through both choice and circumstance. I am reminded of all we have built together. I am also reminded of the heart of the community that has grown around recenterspace and the beauty and ultimate resilience of the human spirit when people allow themselves to be open and curious about their experience in their minds, bodies and their world. And I am fully aware now of the depth of a nagging feeling I have had for a long time: that what we built here, while imbued with magic, was not meant to last in the way I had first envisioned. Instead, our story here on Beach Road is a step along the path of our evolution as a family, my evolution as a mother and partner and teacher and seeker.

The storm is real. It is strong and terrifying at times, but it is filled with possibilities and lessons in its gales. We are letting our sails open in the wind and allowing our ship to be moved with the tides of our life.

I do not yet know what it will mean for me in my work, my livelihood, my life direction and purpose.

For now, that is ok. As I let the reins go, I allow my trust in the basic goodness of life to arise.