Life with julia

In my three or so years of regularly practicing yoga, I’ve learned a lot. And not just about how to do certain poses, or how to stretch a certain way. There has been much more beyond a downward dog and beyond the physical practice. The lessons extend off the mat, as corny as it is to say. The instructors — anybody who leads a class — always talk about taking away what you learned on your mat and applying it to life off your mat. “Your practice doesn’t stop when the class is done,” is what we’re commonly told. “Take what you learn, and carry it with you, for the rest of your day.” So, I’ve often asked myself, “What have I learned from the flow and from this spiritual practice? What have I learned from the breath and the energy?” I think there is a lot — the importance…

I have this Google Chrome app downloaded on my computer and it’s called Momentum (it’s gotten pretty popular over the last couple years, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve heard of it). It essentially replaces your typical Google Chrome tab background with a new landscape and every time you open a new tab, you’re greeted with the time, the words “Good morning/afternoon/evening, [Name]”, and a fresh quote that they pulled from an online source. The other day, when I opened a new tab, a quote by Socrates came up: “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.“ That stopped me in my tracks and instantly got me thinking. Because I have always thought of my life as being constantly busy. Workout classes, dinners or drinks with friends, meetings, appointments — the schedule is always jam-packed. And the crazy thing is that I liked all of it. I liked having one…

I used to absolutely hate this phrase, despite being the positive all too cheery person that I am. Everything happens for a reason. I’d hear it said to others, or people would say it to me, and I would almost always instinctively do the biggest eye roll, an eye roll so big that they’d practically come out of my head. I used to think it was the most cliché phrase ever; I used to associate it with something that people would tell each other (or themselves) every time they wanted to feel better about themselves. But recently, at least in the past few months or so, this phrase has started to grow on me. I’ve started to believe it. I’m not sure if it’s Fate or Destiny that is the ‘it’, but I believe that if you take one job over another, it was for a reason and will have…

I don’t know why turning twenty is something that is daunting to me. In reality, it’s just like any other birthday — you age one year, you have some cake, and you spend time with the special people in your life. But this one feels different, kind of like how turning 10 felt like such a big deal when we were 9. New decade, double digits, maybe a faster bike or better toys. But 20, for some reason, feels like an even bigger deal than that. While the fact that it marks a new decade is the same, the possibilities of this decade feel different. There are just so many doors, and behind each door, still so many paths that one can take. To make it even more intimidating, the stakes seem higher because we’re talking about big life stuff — finding the person you’re going to marry, landing that…

I have been commuting to work (in Midtown Toronto) for exactly two weeks now, and each and every time I find myself on the TTC subway, the same Ezra Pound poem, titled In a Station of the Metro, comes to mind: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.” I had an English teacher in Grade 12 who pulled up this poem during our poetry unit and she talked about how Pound meant to capture how fleeting the glimpses of the faces in the subway were, as each train rushed by him on the platform. I didn’t understand what the poem meant at the time, but now it is all coming back to me. I now think about it each time I commute. As each train comes roaring into the station, I would watch the faces in each car blur and blend together, to…