How my Life Changed in 2006

EEEE!!!!!! how has it been almost a whole other week?? I have clearly not nailed the blogging schedule. And sometimes I'm literally not home all day---I know I could blog from my phone but I am just not there yet.

Back in 2006 Sky and I moved to New York for a year. It was an adventure: we hadn't been together all that long and certainly hadn't lived together. He had an opportunity with work to move there for a year. We moved across the country to a studio apartment and proceeded to have one of the wildest, most fun, action-packed years either of us had ever lived. I could do 10 posts about New York. Luckily I have a sister there and lots of family close by so I do get there fairly regularly. Living there was spectacular. And Sky and I were very much together after sharing an elf-sized closet for a year; we've been back in LA since 2007 and you know the rest, wedding bells and all.

I was going after work as an actress that year there and had high expectations. I had done a lot here in LA and really felt I was going to arrive and take Broadway by storm. It didn't exactly go that way. I did get to audition and actually get really close to doing some wonderful projects, I actually came back here and did a movie, and I had a lot of time to wander the city which I took full advantage of. I'm still paying it off actually:)

Early on in my year there Sky suggested we go to Equinox and take class with someone he'd heard a lot about. He was working for Yoga Works at the time and I suppose was interested in recruiting this person who taught yoga (that's her pictured up top) but also taught this other thing that we were going to check out. That's when I found Intensati and Patricia Moreno. She became one of the most precious and important parts of my year.

Look--here she is. She's so nice and so strong and she shares incredible stories about her own life (she's pregnant right now and has an amazing story about that). Don't you want to run over and meet her? You do.

Remember when I posted about spinning? And how it can be meditative? And that all that sweat is so healing? I only started spinning because I no longer had Intensati when I moved back to LA. It's a hard-core workout where you box and kick and do dance moves and even do some yoga stuff and the whole time Patricia is building a sequence where each move is matched to an affirmation you are saying while you punch, kick, leap, balance, etc. If you wanted to navigate off the page at the word "affirmation" please don't.

I was hooked by the first class. I have always loved spiritual psychology and the dance of getting our heads and hearts to meet. Plus I love to move, love to work hard, love to sweat. I was an easy convert. But I know cynics who have fallen in love with class, people with knee surgeries that can't jump that love class, hardcore business guys who probably don't seem the type to close their eyes and say "what I desire is on its way" but they do, and they come to class religiously. I followed Patricia around the city that year. Went to class as often as I could. We got to be friends and I even taught for her a couple of times before she started a teacher training that's now kicking ass. What grabbed me about it is that it is a practice of embodying--literally---the meditations that probably a lot of you already practice or have heard of. It's getting all those powerful positive thoughts we know we're better off if we think to drop down into our hands and toes. Makes loving life something way beyond an intellectual exercise. There's something about hearing yourself say something out loud like you really mean it; it sticks with you for the rest of the day.

Bottom line: this is one of the most uplifting, affirming, fun (like you can't stop beaming from ear to ear fun), booty-kicking things you will ever do. And for those of you in California, she is here for another week teaching around LA. Go to the website and you can get on the guest list at whichever Equinox she's landing that day. For those of you not in LA or New York there are DVDs and a newsletter a blog and other things to inspire you til someone who does a teacher training brings it to your town (maybe you!). And yes, this is one of the reasons I haven't been home. I've been leaping around a studio affirming life.