Sunrise on Ogunquit beach. From fall 2012, because I’d opted not to bring a camera to Kripalu and thus missed some great mountain sunrises, but this post needed a sunrise image.

Just before 2013 shifted to 2014, I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend at Kripalu doing a yoga retreat. My best friend from junior high, back in the Land of Apples, is turning fifty at the end of this month. I’m turning fifty in April. We needed to do something to…not celebrate so much as wrap our heads around this momentous date with someone else who remembered our twelve-year-old selves, brave and full of possibilities. We figured our options, in the depths of a New England winter, were a yoga retreat or finding a B&B known for astonishingly good breakfast pastries, with a really good Italian restaurant around the corner and a bookstore across the street. While the latter sounds like a potentially stellar long weekend, one thing we’ve both been fighting is a sense of creeping age and creeping lard-ass, due in large part to desk jobs, so we went for the healthier option. Thankfully, my BFF is a well-compensated sys-admin, not a starving artist, and she was willing to kick in extra so I could go. (Thank you, babe! No names since I’m not sure your bosses would appreciate a public shout-out to you sandwiched between erotica excerpts.)

Reconnecting with my friend was the highlight of the trip. In many ways, we don’t have a lot in common anymore. She’s a sys-admin at a large corporation, as previously mentioned. I write naughty novels. She has dogs. I have cats. We both have husbands we adore–yeah!–but our husbands couldn’t be more different and aren’t especially friendly. They don’t dislike each other, but they don’t really connect either. We’re both romance readers, but though we love talking books, we don’t adore a lot of the same authors. (She doesn’t mind some explicit sex, but she’s not a fan of outright erotic romance, let alone BDSM or menage. She likes upright military heroes. I like bad boys.) And yet when we get together, none of that matters. Our long history and shared background in the hills and lakes and small towns of central New York matter, and our wonderful moms who are very much part of our lives, and the bright, sharp edge of adolescent dreams.

The sharp edge of dreams, I think, was why one class, of all the classes I took at Kripalu, stands out. The meditation and dance and physical yoga classes were wonderful. The focus on healthy, plant-based eating helped me get my weight-loss efforts off to a good start. But the “Yoga of Yes” class is the one that changed me.

The instructor had been in theater before she became a yoga instructor–maybe still is–and the focus of the class was a connection between yogic principles and the principles of making art. She offered five points to remember, which were things she learned in rehearsals but she believes applies to yoga practice and life in general.

• Everything you do is brilliant and correct. (She stressed this doesn’t mean everything you do is finished or pretty or ready for public consumption, but the worst hot messes are the most full of prana–life energy–and are part of the process.)
• Just say YES to possibility. (She used the example of the Fool card in Tarot. You won’t move forward unless you step into the unknown. Sometimes you’ll fall, but that’s all right.)
• Listen, listen, listen.
• Create intimacy.
• Commit–if only to learn you’re going the wrong way.
• Risk.
• Be here now.

I realized, listening to her, that I’ve been caught in the energy of NO. I’ve been closing myself to possibilities for all sorts of seemingly good reasons. I’m too old or have too many old injuries to try that physical activity. I get overwhelmed by the energy of crowds so I don’t go out. I can’t risk self-publishing on my own (I’ve been doing it as Sophie Mouette, but that’s only because Dayle already knows what she’s doing and is holding my hand and saying “there, there” a lot) because it involves spending money and what if it doesn’t work? I’m aging and not nearly as cool as I think I am, so I should wear middle-aged clothes and not try to look vibrant and sexy.

Since the Kripalu trip, I’ve bought a cover for my first self-published book and set a schedule for getting it out. I’ve tried a more challenging yoga class, and loved it despite my trepidation, and I’ve started dancing again, though so far only around the living room. I’ve recalibrated my mental shields and found myself invigorated the last few times I went out in a crowd rather than exhausted. (For those of you not so much into the metaphysical, think of it as changing my attitude so I’m focusing on happy, positive experiences, not on the inevitable cranky or unhappy people one encounters who annoy me and waste my energy.) I’m reaching out to old friends and making social plans. Thanks to exercising and eating better, I’ve lost four pounds so far, and I’m embarrassed to say how much that’s helping me feel better about myself. Color me shallow, but after years of being a serious dancer with a firm hourglass figure, I was finding the middle-aged spread depressing, or maybe it was the lack of movement. I’m never going to be a gym rat–that sound boring– but dancing, hiking, and yoga help keep me sane and I need to say yes to them.

I need to say yes to life, and to my own possibilities, which is why I’m declaring 2014 to be

THE YEAR OF YES.

Want to celebrate with me?