Have you really looked at our logo for our Yoga and Hiking series? If you look closely you’ll see that what appears to be the air pathways in the lungs are actually upside-down trees! I purposely had this created (thanks Laurie!) to reflect a vision I had while driving back from one of my own hikes one day.

We talk about it in yoga all the time - the idea that we’re all one, all connected, all part of a bigger whole. I think we often think about other people in that context, but we don’t often think about all the other living beings that surround us.

As I looked at the trees around me on this drive home, I suddenly noticed how much their underlying structure - the trunk, limbs and branches - looked exactly like the illustrations we often see of human lung tissue and the pathways the air travels through in order for us to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. It then wasn’t a big leap for me to consider how that without these trees and their ability to photosynthesize, that life-giving oxygen I breathe would not be nearly so readily available. And if we take it one step further, the carbon dioxide I exhale feeds the trees and gives them the raw materials for their own life sustaining needs. And so the cycle continues.

It’s this kind of realization of our connectedness to nature and each other that I hoped our Yoga and Hiking Series would allow people to start to experience. Over the course of our 9 week series we had such a wonderful time taking in so many beautiful spaces within a 30 minute drive from the studio in Milford. We made new friends, took the time to really notice our surroundings and our own bodies, were inspired by the beautiful words of many great writers and poets (thank you Iris for your beautiful readings!) and saw pieces of Mother Nature that we may not have noticed without the awareness we cultivated through our yoga practice.

Thank you to everyone that joined us over the course of the summer! If you haven’t heard, we’re cooking up some ideas for continuing these experiences through the fall and into the winter, so stay tuned for more!

Here are a few pictures from some of our outings.