Theory and Practice

I’m a practicing lawyer. Somehow, this statement still sometimes takes me by surprise. Until yesterday, however, I could not really put into words why it has felt so strange. And then it hit me . . . while doing yoga, of course. For years, I have been preparing to be a lawyer. For all those years, I have been studying the work I do now. And now, all of a sudden, I am actually doing it.

Interestingly, I have stopped doing as much yoga. It is easy to blame that on a lack of time. I work a lot. And when I am not working, I am catching up on reading, or I am making dinner, or I am sleeping. But lack of time is not really the answer. I get up early enough every day to do at least a short practice, and very often I just do not do it. 

But why? What is it about doing that is, all of a sudden, so difficult?

It is no secret that I am an academic at heart. I loved law school, went to NZ to learn more, and eventually want to work in policy or teach. Even in yoga, I greatly miss teaching. All of my mentors, however, have told me that I cannot do the policy and teaching until I actually practice law. I agree. So here I am. I enjoy the work. After all, it is what I went to law school to do. But it is definitely outside of my comfort zone. I was a student, a teacher, or doing academic-like research and writing for 25 years (preschool excluded). Being in my head, away from the practice itself, is my comfort zone.

But what does any of this have to do with yoga?

The times I have had the most solid yoga practice were the times I was studying for the bar exam, working at the Court of Appeals, and while writing a thesis. Those were the times in my life I was most living in my head as part of my day job. Yoga was the counterbalance to that world. It was my “doing” in a life of “theory” and learning. Yoga Teacher Training was a time where yoga was both. I studied the doing and the theory of yoga together. I read everything I could find about yoga, and I had a daily practice as well. It was during those 9 months that my yoga practice felt the most complete. It is also when I started writing this blog. Yoga, like law, has both sides. You can study all day long, but there is a practical side, what we usually see in studios and yoga classes.

In yoga classes, from asana to meditation, yoga is about being present, watching the monkey mind, but not getting caught up in it. Being a practicing lawyer, by contrast, is all about getting caught in that monkey mind. On that level, therefore, yoga and law balance one another. At a different level, however, they are both a balance between theory and practice. They are both a practice, and it is the doing of the practice that makes the theory worthwhile. They both require doing in order to test the theory we all espouse. 

There is a major tension (call it a chasm) between those who practice law and those who write about how to practice law from the comforts of their academic offices. Law schools are being pushed to change their teaching methods to become more practical. They are being ridiculed for failing to teach students how to actually be a lawyer rather than just think like a lawyer. I get that argument, but I still get excited about presentations on being a lawyer and books on how to practice yoga.

And this is where the yoga lesson hit me. Yoga teaches us about balance. That means a lot more than learning to stand on one foot. For the legal profession, and I am pretty sure most professions, that also means finding a balance between theory and practice. I think we all have a lot to learn from one another. In that time of balance between theory and practice in my yoga life, I thought the chasm I would have to overcome would be the one between yoga and law. Funny how now, I find myself out of my comfort zone in both for the exact same reason. Perhaps it is time to turn back to that lesson of balance -- the balance between theory and practice and finally bridge the chasm that has defined so much of the world for years.

Where do you find yourself on this spectrum of theory and practice? Do you see it in your profession? Do you see it in your yoga? What do you do about it? Honestly, I am looking for ideas, so thoughts and comments are greatly welcome.

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Knowing and Finding Balance

“The only way we can know balance is by knowing imbalance.”

I heard that quote in a yoga class this weekend, and it got me thinking (luckily after the class was over – mostly). When I was a child, I was complaining about winter, and a friend of mine reminded me that winter makes spring all the more beautiful. Thus, from a fairly young age, I have known that we can really ever know something fully by embracing its opposite. This concept works energetically too, of course. Fear and excitement are really the same energy; it is our mind that places a different meaning on them, or it, really.

Finally, law is certainly no different. The best lawyers know their opponents’ arguments better than their opponents know them. It is the only way to be sure to be able to counter them. I did not listen to the entire Supreme Court argument on the Affordable Care Act, but I think I heard that either Justice Kennedy or Justice Scalia said to Paul Clement, “this is not a surprise question, I hope.” Of course, I could be totally wrong, but the sentiment is there. Paul Clement, the highest-ranking legal advocate in the country, is expected to be prepared when he faces those nine justices. And part of being prepared is knowing how other people are going to attack your argument.

I say this to point out that these thoughts and understandings about knowing opposites have permeated my life, my yoga journey, and the legal practice. Yet I had never put any thought into imbalance and its keys to understanding balance. What an opportunity for lawyers and any modern people. I would be willing to bet we are, as a society, at our least balanced in history, and I was not even thinking of the political realm when I wrote that. I was thinking about all of the various aspects of our lives pulling us in so many directions at once. We talk about work-life balance as if learning to balance between the two is going to make it all better, forgetting that we have to learn to balance within each of them as well.

But as of April 1, 2012, April Fool’s Day, imbalance took on a new meaning for me, an opportunity really.  Prior to this, my favorite quote about balance came from another yoga class, one with Frank Jude Boccio, who teaches Mindfulness Yoga. He said to the class as we stood in Tree Pose, “There is no such thing as balance, only balancing.” What a beautiful ability to let go of the struggle to find perfect balance. I embraced it and ran.

But it still focuses on balance from balance’s point of view. To truly know and understand what we mean by balance, whether we seek perfect balance (perhaps unattainable) or a sense of balancing, we can only fully understand and acknowledge it by understanding imbalance.

A new month is upon us. A new week is upon us. I do not know about you, but my week is going to be very, very busy through Wednesday, and then I am going out of town for the holiday. Instead of dreading the first three days of the week and their unbalancing effects, I am going to embrace them. To truly understand balance, we must understand imbalance.

I have been noticing the Earth understanding this concept all weekend. It has, once again, been incredibly windy here in Tucson. Of course, the Spring Equinox was only last week. For the briefest of moments, the Earth was in perfect balance, and this happens twice a year. Not surprisingly, these are the two times per year when the wind is at its most extreme – Autumn (Fall for us Americans) and Spring.

What if we learned to do the same? What if we learned how to find balance internally by witnessing and feeling the imbalance all around us? Are you ready to embrace the imbalance?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved. 

Props, Support, and Paradox

"Using props means I am not as good of a yogi, right?" "Only people who are not flexible need props." "I can touch the floor, so what good does a prop do me?" These common myths about props in yoga correlate fairly directly with our common myths about support in our lives generally.

We live in a world that is moving more and more toward the individual, away from support structures. We are told, whether consciously or unconsciously, that we need to be able to make it on our own. I am reminded of the scene in “American Beauty,” where the mother informs the daughter, “the only person you can trust in the world is yourself.” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. The notion is out there – looking to others for support is, at best, a sign of weakness, and at worst, detrimental to our survival.

Yet, deep within ourselves, I would bet that most of us know this is simply not true. As has been mentioned before, the yoga paradox shows us that the more support we have, the deeper we can go, support also allows us to to further in our lives. In addition, humans are social creatures who not only crave societal interactions but rely upon them for survival. As hunter-gatherers, if we did not have each other, large felines probably would have destroyed us as a species. Creating societies of togetherness has its downfalls – we see those outside our set worlds as “others” – but it also ensures our survival, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

And yet so many of us are afraid to ask for help.

I was at a yoga class this weekend in which we spent most of the class using props, following an Iyengar approach. It was not, however, a restorative class, where I am used to doing that. During teacher training, we learned some techniques for using props in non-restorative (as well as restorative) postures, but I had never attended a class structured around the use of props. It was a small class, and it worked great! The support from the props did not necessarily make the asanas easier. In some ways, they were more difficult. But they were also more “correct.” And the props allowed me to go into postures in ways I never had before.

With the support of the props, the focus could be on ensuring the postures were opening and strengthening properly and safely, instead of struggling just to hold the pose incorrectly. With the use of props, we could fully open up instead of cutting off circulation by pushing ourselves into positions are bodies are not ready to accomplish. In turn, the body can eventually go deeper into the poses quicker and more safely than it ever could have done on its own. The support gets the mind out of the way and allows the body to open up to its fullest potential.

Once again, the body is a lesson for the rest of life. Asking other people for support does not mean we are weak. It does not mean we cannot do it on our own. It may not even make life easier overall. It will, however, help remove the internal struggle we have with ourselves, the struggle that tells us to go further than we are ready. That is how we injure ourselves. That is how we create harm. But with the appropriate support, we can hold ourselves up and move forward in ways that would otherwise take much longer or even cause us harm. With proper support, we can soar to new heights and new ideas without worry.

Props in yoga can be used for all sorts of reasons. They can protect our vulnerable knee joints from taking on too much strain. They can lift the floor to where we can reach, so we can create space in the body instead of constriction. They can be gentle reminders to bring attention to particular parts of ourselves that need attention in a particular pose. They can also be used to keep us from literally falling over in balance postures. When we know how to properly use props, our practice can soar to new heights.

Support off the mat is similar. By finding the proper support, we can protect our vulnerabilities, ensure that our goals are within reach, focus on areas we may have overlooked without the help of outside sources, and ensure we stay as balanced as possible along the way. But the first step is recognizing we need the support and that asking for it will take us further in all our endeavors.

Where do you find support most helpful? How has support changed your yoga practice? How has it changed your life?

Namaste!

© Rebecca Stahl 2012, all rights reserved.

Even Breaths

I have a yoga teacher who starts nearly every class in a similar fashion; she asks us, “is it easier to breathe in or to breathe out?” Inhales and exhales have different energies. On the inhale, we are filling our bodies with what the world has to offer. On an exhale, we are letting go of stale energy and anything in our bodies that no longer serves us. Over the course of our lives, we will have exactly as many inhales as exhales. Our first experience of the breath is an inhale, and our last experience is an exhale.

How often do you notice how they interact? How often do you notice which is stronger?

Lawyers and other professionals have a tendency to live on the edge and to struggle to find balance. It is no coincidence that one of the hottest topics in the professional community is work-life balance. The ubiquity of the topic indicates just how out of balance so many of us really are (and yes, I include myself in this category somewhat more than I would like). 

There are countless ways yoga can help us find balance, from asana (including tree pose) to noticing the equinox’s effect on our balance systems. But the simplest technique is to turn back to the breath. The breath and breathing is no foreigner to this blog, but somehow this simple technique has not yet graced its pages. And instead of focusing exclusively on the reality of balance, it focuses on the quality of balance, more easily expressed as evenness. 

The simplest technique is to bring evenness to the breath, evenness to the inhales and the exhales. Try this. Close your eyes (after you read this paragraph) and just notice your inhale and your exhale. Notice which one is longer and which one is stronger. They may not be the same one. Then consciously start to bring even them. Count the length of each, and try to inhale and exhale to the same count. Then slowly start to increase the length of each. See if you can double it from where you started.

Simple, right? All you have to do is breathe and count. Bringing evenness to the breath is a quick way to take control of our out of control lives and bring some semblance of balance back to them. A simple breathing technique cannot pick up the kids from school on time, but it just may help you slow down enough to focus and remember what time they have to be picked up. It can remind us that we carry this sense of evenness within us at all times. We just have to remember to tune in and notice.

The best part about this technique is that it can be done anywhere. Whether you are sitting at your desk or stuck in traffic, evenness in the breath can help you bring the quality of balance to your day. Just do it with your eyes open if you happen to be in your car.

What is your favorite way to bring evenness to your day? Do you notice a difference between chasing balance and finding evenness?

Namaste!

Even Breaths is part of the series At the Desk, which focuses on practical tips from the yoga world (and other interesting finds) to help those of us stuck at the desk all day long. If you are interested in other tips, click the label “At the Desk,” and if you have any specific questions you would like to see discussed, send them my way.

© Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.

Even a Stopped Clock . . . Comes Into Balance

This week is full of special days. September 21 was GlobalPeace Day, and September 23 is the equinox. And no, I specifically did not call it the Autumnal or the Spring Equinox because this year of living in the southern hemisphere utterly confused means that in my head it is both.

I talked about my first experience with the equinox 6 months ago (here). And now the tables are turned. As the northern hemisphere begins to experience red and orange leaves and cooler evenings, we are finally seeing flowers bloom and light past 7pm. The equinox is the moment of balance in the world. It is a brief moment in time when the center of the sun is in the same place as the Earth’s equator. Emotionally, we all connect to that sense of balance.

The Otago University Clock Tower with spring flowers in front. 

It is a cliché, but it is also true: “even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” Similarly, twice per year, the Earth comes into perfect balance with the sun. The rest of the year one side is tilting away while the other side tilts toward it, but the equinox brings us all into that balance, even for just a moment.

I thought for the briefest of moments I would call this post Flowers in September, but that theme is old. But more than old, it also does not fit. This equinox is not a time for me to feel disconnected from what I know. Yes, it is still weird to me that days are getting longer during the college football season, and there are blossoms blooming as the Jewish High Holidays approach. These events defined fall to me growing up, and now it is Spring. So I remain confused, but the balance is stronger than the confusion.

I still believe the equinox is a time to celebrate both rebirth and letting go, spring and fall. But it is also a time to recognize that even an imbalanced world comes into balance twice a year. Life has a tendency to get in the way of us noticing that. Deadlines loom. Clients call. Kids scream. Holidays approach. But for two days a year, together we can all notice and recognize a sense of balance. Moreover, we can all find that sense of balance at any time just by knowing it is possible.

I taught my third class at the Yoga Studio here as well as my Monday class at the university this week. Balance was, of course, the theme for both. Often when people think of balance in yoga, they think of standing with only one leg on the ground in postures such as Vrksasana (Tree Pose), or of arm balances. This week, though, my favorite balance pose is Tadasana (Mountain Pose). From the outside it looks like someone simply standing.

There is no question that practicing balancing on one foot is useful and can help us find balance in life off the mat as well. But too often we forget that we first need to find balance when standing on two feet. We must come back to the “simple” balance before attempting anything more difficult. The equinox is similar. It is a coming back to center, to balance, twice a year. The rest of the year the poles pull in opposite directions, and we all lead our crazy lives, sometimes forgetting to come back to a place of balance. But twice a year we get the reminder. Twice a year the Earth stands upright. Twice a year the Earth is in perfect balance.

Thus, no matter how far away from a sense of balance we find ourselves, we can remember that like a stopped clock, twice a year, there is balance in the world. When we place both feet on the ground, we can connect to that balance anytime. Easy? Perhaps not. But you can know it is possible. Even with all the destruction and mayhem of this year, the Earth is still coming back to its center, its balance. Luckily for us, we do not have to wait six months before we can find our own sense of balance. We just have to remember to stop and stand on our own two feet. 

I hope you can take a moment this week and feel that sense of balance. And I hope you can use the knowledge of its existence the rest of the year to remember that no matter how out of balance you might feel, it is always there within you.

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

Let it go and start afresh

Modern life, especially modern life in an office, means detachment from nature and its cycles. We wake up in a house, walk into a car, walk into an office, then back into the car and back into the house. Sunshine, rain, and wind fail to change how our days progress. Weather and changing seasons matter little from the 20^th floor of an office building. Working in Phoenix in the summer, I had to carry a winter coat to work because it was so cold inside the building even though it was 110 degrees outside. But the Earth shifts and changes, and it has a lot to teach us if we tune in.

This week, however, we had an equinox, one of the four times a year when the seasons officially change, and for a brief moment, we think about the earth and its cycles. Generally, I think only of the seasons changing in the northern hemisphere. From my brief internet research, about 90% of the world’s population lives in the northern hemisphere. Here in New Zealand, however, we just celebrated the fall equinox. As the world’s bloggers were talking about rebirth, I am watching the sky turn gray and the weather turn cold. It does not feel like the rebirth the rest of the world is experiencing.

But yoga provides another perspective. The equinoxes are the points of transition for the Earth. They are our reminders that as one part of the world is in a state of rebirth, the other is in a state of shedding that which does not support it. As the leaves fall off the trees and the wind starts to blow stronger, we know that on the other side of winter, we will be experiencing the rebirth that we see in the northern hemisphere. In other words, we notice the cycle, the same cycle that affects us whether we pay attention or not.

But this recognition that the Earth goes through both stages at once is our reminder that so do we, as individuals. We can get stuck in our northern hemisphere view that it is spring, or we can open up and feel that at all moments, we are struggling to find the balance between letting go and rebirth. The image that keeps coming to mind is the phoenix, who must burn into ashes and from those ashes is reborn into a strong bird once again.

So, even though we see and experience only one or the other at a time, either spring or fall, both are impacting the Earth at the same time, and therefore both are affecting each and every one of us. Yoga is a reminder to tune back into the changing patterns of the Earth and ourselves. As we take the time to notice our own bodies, our own breath, and our own reactions to life, we can learn to tune into the way the Earth’s cycles affect us.

Yoga also teaches us about balance. There are particular balance postures, where you are standing on one foot, but there is also the balance between strength and flexibility, the balance between responding and reacting, and the balance between tuning in to our internal awareness and being affected by that which hits us externally.

Thus, it may be easy to ignore the cycles of the Earth, to go from the house to the car to the office where you need a winter coat even though it is sauna-like outside. But for a moment, tune in and notice that the Earth is able to hold letting go and rebirth together, as it transitions to fall down below and spring up above. What areas of your life do you want to allow to fall off, burn to ashes, so you can allow them to rebirth into something stronger and more useful to you?

Happy Fall and Happy Spring.

Namaste! 

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

When Stability is Lost

As you have all probably heard, on Tuesday at 12:51pm New Zealand time, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch. I was there, and after a few days of reflection, shock, etc., I have decided to blog about it on this blog. For those interested in my personal story about that day, please check out my other blog dedicated to my time in New Zealand, having little to do with yoga or the law, but for what I encounter in my daily living. 

Although I spent many years in Michigan and Arizona, I grew up in California, so Tuesday’s quake (for ease, I am using NZ days, not US days) was by no means my first encounter with a shaking Earth. It was, however, the strongest feeling earthquake I have ever encountered, though not highest magnitude, and it has affected me differently than anything before.

Yoga and law intersect in a myriad of ways, but one of my favorites to discuss is the concept of balance. As I have pointed out fairly recently, vrksasana (tree pose) is my favorite pose to do wherever, and it is wonderful for helping create a sense of balance both internally and externally. Lawyers are constantly struggling to find balance in their lives, in all different arenas, and balance postures of all types (but of course tree!) are a great step in the right direction.

When teaching a balance posture in a class, my most typical instruction/statement is, “feel the support of the Earth for steadiness.” An earthquake, by contrast, eats away at that steadiness, and it literally shakes the one stable part of our lives. That is a really big deal. It is the reason that the 4 months of aftershocks the people in Christchurch felt since September had been so wearing on their souls. Tuesday just ripped them apart, emotionally as well as physically.

But what happens on a broader level when that which is supposed to be stable in our lives is completely lost? For the briefest of moments, it forces you to go by instinct alone. Being raised in CA, we know what to do in earthquakes, and before I knew what I was doing, I was under a table covering my head, making sure others were under the table as well, hearing the kiwis (also well-trained) yelling at us silly Americans to be under the tables. No thought, just action. We were on the 5^th floor of a Rugby stadium (I was in Christchurch for a conference/forum that was taking place at the stadium, though many of the delegates were not at the stadium at that time, my group was), and by the time I got to the bottom outside, I had emailed my parents. No thought, just instinct. When stability is lost, thoughts are lost, and we can only act on instinct.

Our bodies are designed to survive. That is what stress is – a survival instinct. It gets us excited, shuts off non-essential functions, and we are able to do what it takes to survive. In this instance, stress was what allowed me to cover my head before my computer. In these moments of non-stability, stress is what keeps us alive, our instincts guide us.

Down on the ground, outside the stadium, I saw the next step – the coming together, the community creation. Still unstable, and probably slightly in shock, we did what we did without thought. Hugs, including group hugs, were common for hours. Stadium employees, citizens of Christchurch, helped us all afternoon long. They brought us blankets, gave us updates, directed traffic, etc., all while being unsure about their own homes and some of them, unsure of their families. As the delegation boarded a bus to leave the city, I hugged a new friend. I will probably never see her again, and I do not know her name, but I will never forget her. In those moments of instability, we seek comfort and community. With each aftershock, we all grabbed whoever we were near and held on. Not only did we try to hold one another up, but if we were going to go down, we were going to go down together.

So much of this blog has focused on the problems with letting stress and survival instincts get out of control, but this is all the more reason to remember what instincts are really about. The Forum I was attending was the NZ-US Partnership forum (that page has a photo of the cathedral on it from before the earthquake), and I was part of the first-ever Future Partners Forum. When asked how to increase partnership, what we want the world to be in 20 years, and what changes we think we need to make, I kept coming back to interconnectedness / community, which I am sure is not surprising to anyone who reads this blog regularly.

As I sat on the C130 Air Force Jet taking us away from the Christchurch war zone, I started to cry. I wondered how we get to places where instead of banding together, we create enemies, whether in war or in the office. I heard story after story from the main delegates who were in the main city center when this happened, not to mention my own feeling of community, and I knew that our deepest instinct is to support one another and find stability together.

As we got off the plane, I told a high-ranking US politician that if we are to survive, we have to act, at all times, as we acted that day. The best part was that he agreed. For a brief moment, idealism, from my yoga background and my generational attitude, was able to come through. 

So, when stability is lost, we look to recreate it, we look to community. What a different world this would be if instead of looking to our small community, we looked to humankind as our community, and we realized how similar we all really are. Yoga, meditation, and even legal conferences, have helped me find community, but we are at a point in history where instability is becoming the rule of the world, from governmental overthrows to the Earth fighting back, and we have to make a choice whether we tune into our deepest instincts for connection or whether we allow ourselves to see our differences, our otherness, etc.

There is so much more to say on this topic, and I am sure I will come back to it. Christchurch was an intense experience, and its teachings fit so well into the theme of this blog. But when stability is lost, we seek to recreate it. Instinct is immediate, but after that we have a choice. What choice will help as many people as possible? What choice can create the biggest and strongest community that will become unshakable, pun intended.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not express my continued gratitude to all who were there with me, but especially to the US Embassy and its staff, and to Fulbright New Zealand and its staff. Together they informed the world quickly and efficiently that we were okay, and they got us (and our kiwi friends) safely out of Christchurch before 7:30pm.

Namaste and Blessings! 

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved
This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

What is flexibility?

In my yoga class tonight (as a student), the teacher told me that I am almost too flexible. I almost burst out laughing, but she was looking at one part of my body, my shoulder blades, and telling me to breath into them. She was right; I needed to fill them with some air, but too flexible? Not I! Not even close!

I have been focusing on flexibility a lot this week. I was presenting at a conference on Monday where someone’s emergency caused me to have to change my presentation plans. Then my flight was delayed. I also spent much of this past week writing my handouts for my yoga workshop for lawyers. One of the best benefits of yoga for lawyers I could find, besides balance, is flexibility.

The most common reason/excuse/justification I hear from people as to why they do not do yoga is that they are not flexible enough. I rarely know how to respond to this. Very few people are flexible when they start yoga, at least not physically. But what does the phrase, “I’m not flexible enough” say about a person?

Usually the person saying it means in the physical sense. Flexibility, however, is much deeper. Our flexibility is about how we relate to each other, to situations that arise in life, to other ideas, and to our own beliefs. Flexibility is life. Imagine a plant - we know it is alive when it is malleable, when it can sway with the wind. When plants die, they become hard and static, unable to bend without snapping. (Yes, all beings follow this pattern, but the most common dead thing most of us encounter are plants.)

An ability to take life as it arises is something I admire in people. Yoga has helped me let go of my controlling tendencies, my need to know what is happening, my desire to know the future, but I am far from feeling fully flexible. Some days are easier than others. But even though tonight in class, my shoulder blades were dipping, it was mostly because my chest is tight, and they are overcompensating. So, once again, I find myself seeking a balance, this time between front and back. Once again, my body is teaching me what my soul needs to learn.

So, my new answer to “I’m not flexible enough” is going to be, “just start.” Start testing the waters. Start moving with life. Start moving your body. Each and every day, I see my body change. Some days, like today, I feel strong and flexible all at the same time. But even on days like today, I see those parts of me that feel stiff as a board. Those places, those moments, are my best teachers.

I hope to encourage others to trust themselves enough to take that leap, to begin to let go, and to see what the world has to offer.

Namaste and blessings!

© Copyright 2010. Rebecca Stahl.