It's February, and love is in the air. To quote Nicholas Sparks, "Love is like the wind. You can't see it, but you can feel it." This past week, in my yoga classes, I was talking about air and wind, and how the air element has direction and how you can harness it to move you toward your purpose. Love is the same way. It has direction: giving and receiving. When you feel Love, it can help to move you in the direction you wish to go. Sometimes in yoga, we talk about the concept of Grace. We say "Open to Grace," and sometimes that is unclear. What is Grace? What does opening to it mean? Well, I think we can substitute the word Love for the word Grace and it becomes more easily understandable. One of my philosophy teachers, Bill Mahony, teaches that the entire Universe was born out of Love- that the existence of everything that IS came about because a primordial consciousness had an urge to Love. And it created itself and everything else in many different shapes and forms so that it could know Love in diverse ways. So, if we open to Love, we open to Grace, and we feel that everything is connected. And this brings about (at least for me,) a profound sense of peace, and order, and "right-ness" in a world that often feels so disjointed and confusing. What if EVERYTHING is another opportunity to experience love? My husband Tim and I have a running joke that we've been telling each other for the last 26 years or more. Whenever we watch a movie or TV show, and there inevitbaly comes a point in the story where the hero and the heroine declare their love for one another, we smile at each other and say, "Ohhh, it's a LOVE STORY.' Whether it's a movie about aliens in outer space, or the zombie apocolypse, or the Wild West, or whatever, it's always a Love Story. And maybe life is like that too- always a Love Story, even when it isn't obvious at first. My teacher Todd Norian often says that the winds of Grace are always blowing, but it's up to you to open the sails. Let's substitute the word Love for the word Grace, and open our minds and hearts to receive the Love of the Universe. I think it will move us in the direction we wish to go. With love, Cheryl | 
