Be On Top of Your Mountain
Challenge yourself to make this pose more difficult, more meaningful. Make it matter. Think of Mountain Pose as your family and the other poses as your friends, teachers, pets, and strangers. Honor your family by being steady. Stay still and aware. This will build your power. This will build your LIFE FORCE. This will build strength in your family.
There are many ways to lose your power. Fidget, 
fiddle, move fast, leave your mat,, talk, turn one foot out, hyperextend your knee. You get disconnected and unplugged from your source of what matters.
You will realize, it really is not so easy to be still.
So what to do? Practice thinking of Mountain as your Family.
We tend to be casual with our family. We might chew with our mouth open, sit slumped, or ignore what they are saying. We tend to pay more attention to our friends at the expense of those closest to us. It’s the same with our poses. Poses such as Crow and Triangle get much more attention. Friends and strangers get more attention. Family is hard. Mountain is a hard pose. It sounds weird at first. Just standing with dignity and steadfastness is hard?
Yes.
So, Honor your home. Honor your heart.
Don’t let yourself become lax or lazy…rather make an effort to find strength. It is there, deep within. Make this easy pose challenging so your challenging poses become easier. Be still and aware of your family so you can hold that space with the challenging people in your life. Tap into that strength at any time, and use it to achieve your heart’s desire.
And tap into it again and again, with each cycle of breath – Stay steady in Mountain. Hold onto your power. Honor the Highest.
Stand with your feet parallel. Root your feet into the earth and rise up inside with your breath. 
Connect below and above-into the earth and up toward the sky-rooted and rising as a strong mountain on the horizon. As you exhale, gently bring your palms to touch in front of your heart. Soften between your shoulder blades. Inhale and draw energy from your feet to your basement. Lengthen the sides of your body. Exhale and bring your shoulders back. Feel the solid ground within yourself- stable and present in this moment. Be on top of your mountain, know your brightness, and shine your light out into the world.
Yogi Bhajan taught us to Recognize that the other person is you.
Here’s to the power of recognition. Sat Nam
As Earth Day approaches this year, I am struck by what it means to truly foster Peace on this planet. I remember as a child, learning about anti-nuclear protestors who chained themselves to fences and were forcibly removed and jailed. These brave souls became my heroines and heroes in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. I was moved to tears singing Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind” and hearing stories of civil disobedience and the message of non-violent resistance. Later in the 1990’s, when I danced barefoot on my very first Earth Day, a lump would form in my throat when I celebrated each small victory (and the Gigantic Hearts) of environmental protestors who sacrificed so much to save a single tree and worked to preserve open space for our children’s children. Peace.
We all have a limited, contracted, outer surface. Yoga teaches us to dig deep into our center to know our true, authentic selves. Yoga Teacher Barbie was gifted to me on my birthday and I have chosen to Ground her and help her to expand her consciousness. All of my students are gifts; yet this is my first one who was born in Indonesia and had a non-existent childhood,. No wonder she has restricted knowledge.
Sedef Dion who teaches a Pre-Grounded class at Springs Yoga shared with me the story of a four year old girl who in the cutest way mistakenly called Savasana….Lasagna. This inspired me to write a Savasana visualization with a Lasagna theme that Amy and I recently used to connect with our Fernbank Elementary Yoga Club students. After we did our practice complete with the Lasagna Savasana, one of our students..the Principal’s seven year old daughter said…”that was so relaxing…this could help me fall asleep at night”. Since it was her birthday that day, we wanted to put together a recording that her parents could play for her as she lays her head down for a good night rest after a long day.