About: Cascade Yoga Studio -- Articles

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River of change

by Sarah Weber

Cascade Yoga Studio Instructor Sarah Weber Two years. Really? Two years!? I double-check my mental calendar. Yup. Two years since my husband and I traveled halfway across the world to meet and bring home our daughter from China.

Let me press rewind for a moment - two years ago I was working at a private practice clinic in Muskegon as a physical therapist and teaching yoga here at Cascade Yoga Studio. Before being matched with our daughter, I was confident that six weeks of unpaid maternity leave was going to be enough time to adjust to having a new baby. Isn’t that what all working moms took? Then, just two months before we were to meet our daughter, I saw the first picture of her and realized, no, six weeks wasn’t going to cut it. Not after a two-and-half-year process of paperwork, waiting, and the emotional rollercoaster that inevitably accompanies the many hiccups in the adoption process.

I didn’t really have any understanding of what motherhood would be like, but I knew I needed to create more space to fully enjoy the arrival of this new person into my life. So I quit my job in Muskegon and asked Cascade Yoga if I could bow out of teaching for a few months. I decided to step out of the familiar and rewarding stream of working and teaching to dive headfirst into the unknown river of motherhood.

Because of a number of reasons that life presented, my leave of absence at the studio has been longer than a few months. But now, here I am, at the studio once again. Yet, in the few weeks since my return, I discovered that it’s not the same studio that I left two years ago: there are new students, new teachers, new receptionists, new classes. To be honest, I felt a little out of my comfort zone. Until, of course, I realized that not everything is different. There is still the same peaceful quality to the studio space itself. Oh, yes, and there are many familiar faces too – warm and smiling.

How interesting it’s been to observe my desire to return to a fully known, familiar place. In other words, I wanted to teach at the studio as I remembered it two years ago. I am struck by the truth of the statement that “you can never step into the same river twice.” In the time I was away from teaching at Cascade Yoga, the studio has changed and grown, as it should. And, amazingly, so have I.

All rivers flow from the same Source, but each have their own lessons to teach. My sense of gratitude grows as I step anew into this river of teaching and wait to see what I can learn.

You can take Beyond Basics with Sarah at 5:45 on Tuesdays.