Yoga On the Steps For Living Beyond Breast Cancer, May 20, 2012, 8.30am-11.30am

Like most things I adore, Yoga On The Steps for Living Beyond Breast Cancer event was born of pure serendipity. Twelve years ago, I was up on the Art Museum Steps practicing yoga, trying to inspire and drag myself out of the rut and vicious circle of what my friend Amy calls, “the worrying-well”. I was going through a funky, rutty transition in my professional life, from the world of show business and theatre to the world of healing, yoga and inspirational coaching.

I was also breaking up with my boyfriend and had moved back to Philadelphia after being away for over 16 years. There was a lot of turbulent change and since I don’t do “change” well – or so I’ve observed – I was focused on re-energizing my future.

I wanted to know what was next? What was next?! I needed a positive vision, so I headed to the Philadelphia Art Museum Steps to do my yoga practice and hope for something good to come of Sun Salutations, besides the stretch and work out.

As I looked down the parkway, over the city skyline, I was filled with awe for the beauty of the city, and the architectural inspiration of the Philadelphia Art Museum. The feeling of being up on the steps, meditating and moving in yoga poses was helping me feel the opportunity and art of my own challenges. I felt like I had found a power spot, a place to retreat; to see, feel and touch a new frontier, the next chapter and be part of a community. I had a dream of sharing the soul food of the yoga practice with hundreds of others.  How would my dream unfold? I had no idea.

I saw the steps filled with people, feeling not alone on their journey, but together, inspired, peaceful, and all poised to take their next step. I kept feeling a loving, benevolent presence, a soulfulness that could inspire people to be more at home in their own skin, while sharing the experience of “taking the next step” in life.

Yoga helps me be in touch with my own intuition, wisdom and Best Self and truly that’s what’s meaningful to me about the Yoga On The Steps event; it’s a kind of communal retreat for everyone to feel what matters to them – in their own mind and body and soul, regardless of age, life experience, or gender. I am truly grateful to have met so many wonderful people that continue to form my sense of home.

Courtney Kapp brought the vision and dedication of what was possible for yoga as a tool for personal growth in community to Jean Saks (President of Living Beyond Breast Cancer) and we co-founded the Yoga On The Steps fundraiser for Living Beyond Breast Cancer.
Courtney Kapp is a wonderful model of how yoga can helps heal breast cancer survivors. I was honored to work with her. She introduced to me Jean Sachs, who trusted the vision, and enlisted a fabulous staff to grow the event.

Now 10 years later, Living Beyond Breast Cancer is introducing Yoga On The Steps to Denver, Colorado, Sunday, September 23, Cheesman Park and Washington, DC, Sunday, October 14, Freedom Plaza – For detailed information go to: www.lbbc.org

This year will mark the 10^th year anniversary of Yoga On The Steps.  I am honored to be leading the yoga and meditation class (for all ages and levels) again in support of all the women who have had breast cancer and face those challenges for the best quality of life.

My participation is in memory of my grandmother, Kathleen Converse, who had breast cancer (and was also one of my best friends) as well as to all the women who I have met, worked with, and taught me a greater depth of peace – including Bea Marx – who’s legacy is being honored this Sunday, May 20^th at Yoga On The Steps, Philadelphia – 8.30-noon.

I am committed to Yoga On The Steps and Living Beyond Breast Cancer for all women (and men who attend) to feel empowered and proud of the quality of life they are living – body, mind and spirit – and be enabled to dream and be inspired by their own vision.

As always, I welcome your participation in retreats, yoga classes, and coaching this summer.

Onward with serendipity and dreams.

Cheers,
Jennifer Schelter

This is my new formula: Just Do It + Excellent Excuses As To Why You Can Do It = Doing It
I ask myself, Why is doing what I really want so hard?

I have a lovely list of excuses and justifications. And before I’m dust, I’m learning to surpass them one by one.

For example, 7 years ago a yoga student said, “You should lead a yoga retreat.”

I thought, No, I shouldn’t. That’s out of my league. How the heck would I do that?

He added, “Just do it.” (Nike wisdom.)

A month later I found the Maya Tulum webs site. The Caribbean white sand beach said, “Just do it! No excuses. You have to do it!”

Still the excuse ridden, cranky voice of a mean Protestant Work Ethic, Penny Pincher Witch in a dark hole kept screaming at me in my mind: You can’t do that. It’s out of your price range. You’ll die penniless! No joy and fun for you. Get back to resignation, numbness and suffering.)

But I was determined and the new mantra became: Yes, we have enough time and money. Yes, we have more than enough knowledge. No regrets. Yes, we’re doing it!

Indeed, this is the 5th year of the Radiant Retreat.
Try this mini-retreat meditation: Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Imagine it’s March 24, 2012 and you are headed to the Radiant Retreat to restore and inspire your body and soul. You have your plane ticket. Your bags are packet. You took the plunge and signed up. You are boarding the plane knowing you will do the perfect amount of yoga. It doesn’t matter if you are “a yoga person”. You don’t need to be. That’s not this type of group. You will do the perfect amount of whatever you fancy. Some meditation. Some writing with Laura Munson, NY Times Best Selling Author, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is. Maybe you will paint. Maybe you will sing. Maybe you will play your guitar. Maybe you will hike the pyramids and have a margarita. You are on an adventure. What do you want to experience? What freedom is calling your name?

How often do you give your self-permission to experience something new, outside your comfort zone? The only way to grow is to be uncomfortable, stretch, risk and do it. (I’m talking to myself!)

What do participants find meaningful about the Radiant Retreat? New inspiration, creativity, relaxation, playfulness, laughter, peace, joy, health, and fun. Not bad for 5 days!

What will you give your self time and permission to do in 2012?
(Start you own small business? Go on a trip to Africa? Fall in love?)

What are you committing to?

Curious…to know…

Happy Holidays &  Thank you,

Jennifer Schelter

The word “Namaste” is a Sanskrit word that traditionally means: “I bow to the light in you.”

However, as Fall, and change and Thanksgiving and 45 years of life hang in my flesh, my new definition (Oh, help the Sanskrit police are probably going to fine me) of Namaste is on going:

I bow to the temporary nature, cycles and inevitable changes of Life.

I bow to the exciting thrill of love and loss, and the creepy, daunting feeling that life is flashing before my eyes (as I clear out my basement and find way too many photographs).

I bow to the hunger of what I’ve been “putting off” and face it now.

I bow to self-acceptance and wish it wasn’t so damn challenging.

I bow to cultural conditioning that I need not believe in.

I bow to new wrinkles and gray hairs.

I bow to my hairdresser, Sandy, who covers them blonde.

I bow to what feels more truthful and Right, than “How are you?” “Fine”.

I bow to being brave and knowing now is the “when”, I’ve been waiting for.

I bow to no more “waiting for” anymore and take on “If not now, when?”

I bow to the “new normal” which is code for  “This is what I need to learn how to do & be now”.

I bow to not knowing how it will all turn out.

I bow to knowing and trusting it will.

I bow to candy corns and what clothes to get rid of and what clothes to wear.

I bow to the “We” in no walking on eggshells and a new found love of corn nuts and a beer.

I bow to swimming out to the float in Vermont and listening to the loons and wondering if I’ll ever get over thinking about sharks while I swim.

My favorite emails?

Happy people with positive feedback and talk. (Or at the very least improvements!)

So Amy writes, “I had a huge success at camp on my summer’s end vacation and I know yoga/you had something to do with it and that is for the first time since my surgery in 2003 I was able to get up on one water ski!

I have been lucky enough to get up on two and then drop a ski – but starting on one in the water has always been tough – UNTIL – THIS AUGUST!!  Words can’t describe how excited I was/am – like a little kid mastering something they had been trying like crazy to do.  Then I just went wild and windsurfed – first time in about 20 years and a whole host of other things.

Bottom line: Thank you for being a part of my big shiny success and smile!”

Go Amy! Go anyone willing to commit to something other than an excuse or story that keeps them stuck.

Thank you for sharing your success. Love it.

Hope to see you soon!

Happy Autumn.

I never expected the Morris Arboretum to be the place where yoga would flourish and become such a wonderful event. And yet, if I look back on being a kid rolling side ways down the open lawns, that’s exactly what was happening at age 8. Enjoying the beauty of Chestnut Hill.

For the past 10 years I have offered yoga classes on the hill in the Morris Arboretum (where a lot of people say their “I do’s” and get married) facing the setting sun over the Dixon Estate.

We, a group of positive “summer is here and I’m so glad to be outside” type group of men and women, between the ages of 20 and 70-something, spread out our yoga mats on the sloping lawn to face the enchanting evening sun. It’s like a summer version of sledding except everyone looks like they’re riding a bright colored magic carpet, surfing over the grass as we move into various yoga positions, stretch, breathe, relax and laugh celebrating our great fortune to commune with the gardens.

We have also embraced rain. We have marched indoors to accommodate.  We have taken a “walk-about” and explored various pockets of the garden, trees and taken deep breaths by the stream watching a blue heron, and into the petal perfumed air from the Rose Garden.

One year a crack of thunder and lightening stuck. We all shrieked and ran for cover as a sudden tornado-ish wind swept around us, and the George Rickey “Two Line” sculpture arms spun like a helicopter. We scattered to our cars, laughing as someone screamed, “The wicked witch is coming!”

And one time in final relaxation pose, laying on the clover, facing the sky, it began to sprinkle raindrops. Totally content to lay face up like kids catching snowflakes, everyone stayed still smiling.

We’ve also ventured up in the trees, balancing like birds on the Out On A Limb, tree house  – 50 feet in the air, bending and communing with the canopy of foliage.

For those new to Chestnut Hill or to yoga, who are open to the adventure of feeling fully alive this summer, give your body, mind and funny-bone a weekly adventure/retreat to the perfect location for savory summer ease and well-being.

Yoga can change your outlook on feeling the positivity and release of being able to move, stretch, breath and relax or heal in our natural Chestnut Hill bounty. Plus the friendships and positive vibe are all an added bonus.

It was just last summer what we all witnessed the “brightest orange sun ever” drop into the valley. We shared an exhale and as if a Greek chorus whispered, “Wow! That was one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen.”

Call Morris Arboretum for registration. – 215 – 247 – 5777 x 156

Yoga Out On A Limb starts Sunday, June 5,  – 8.30-10am

Yoga Around The Garden starts 10 Tuesdays, June 7 –August 9 – 7-8.15pm

Flying back from Phoenix and doing yoga on the rim of the Grand Canyon,

I’m reading an article, Which Came First The Chicken or The Egg?

It’s got me thinking, Which came first yoga or a yogi?

My second cousin, Suzan is married to Lynn, who is the fasted talking Jewish lawyer in the West. He smokes cigars under the stars, loves to collect garden gnomes and share his research about the “Expanding Universe Theory”.

He takes a puff and then in his Bugs Bunny Meets George Burns sounding voice says,  “Once the Universe was a dot! A dot! Get it?! A dot! There was no space and time. Get it? ! Nowhere and no when!”

The article reads…In many folkloric cultures the World Egg Theory prevails – the egg is the creation of itself, and our world hatches from its own shell fully intact.

The origin myths of Hinduism, in ancient Sanskrit texts, and Taoism believe sky and earth began as two halves of a broken egg.

In most world religions eggs are a symbol of life’s fertility and cyclical nature…

So Easter Sunday, my second cousin, Suzan (who I am visiting for the first time at her home in Phoenix) and I are driving to the Grand Canyon.

As we pull out of the driveway she says, “I have to admit. I don’t know the way there but I think we’ll be fine.”

I say, “Yeah, getting directions to the biggest hole in the world shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

On the high way, I can’t stop saying, “Wow, look at the cactus! Look at that cactus!”

There are big monstrous Road Runner cartoon-like cacti everywhere.

And she says, “There’s called saguaro cactus. And that – she points off into the distance – is called a mesa. See that flat part at the top of the mountain? We’re going to drive up and over it.”

I say, “Oh, wow.”

I don’t believe her.

And then we do and she says, “See.”

My education of cacti and a mesa are literally from the Road Runner cartoon.

Suzan says, “Can’t you just feel what it might have been like to be on horse back?”

“Yes,” and I’m grateful to be in her green Kia, she calls “The frog”,  going 80 + miles an hour on Rte I-17, past Bloody Basin Rd., Table Mesa Rd. Bumble Bee Rd. and Horse Thief Basin.

She tells me the story of how she fell in love with the West, graduated from Emory, got a job at a lawyer, moved from the East Coast, got married and never looked back.

“It was a sensory feeling. It felt good and right.  The sky and mountains. The West.”

I get her drift. It’s vast and open. The tight-knit-Founding Fathers, Colonialism of the East vanishes in the vast, vistas of rubble desert, red rock and blue sky.

We see a sign in Flag Staff at the Quality Inn: No Train Noise, No Martians.

I ask directions for the Quality Inn receptionist. She doesn’t look up from her knitting. She hands me a piece of paper with directions to the Grand Canyon.

We proceed. Past a barn covered in a cow mural, snow peaked mountains and 5 moose running through pine scrub forests.

We pass mini-vans. And follow signs.

There are the usual teepee tourist shops and the Flintstone Lodge with Yabba-Daba-Doo by the parking lot.

It’s snow and rain as we pulled up the Grand Canyon National Park.

We arrive at the entrance of the Grand Canyon National Park and park ranger with the right ranger hat and outfit on sticks his head out and says,

“Today’s’ the last day of Free National Parks! Have fun.”

He hands us a map of what I later call “the Grand Canyon campus”.

Suzan and I high-five each other and find the parking lot to the main look out point.

We park. Her hat blows off twice. It windy and spitting rain.

As we near the canyon Suzan says,  “Do you want to close your eyes and I’ll lead you to the edge?”

How steep and big could the Grand Canyon be? I’ve been to Colorado, and trekked the Annapurna Mountains in Nepal. I’m a pro at travel. How scary could it be?

“Sure. It’s like a trust exercise.” I hold her hand. The wind and rain subsides.

It reminds me of a popular meditation we do in the labyrinth at Maya Tulum on the Radiant Retreat.  One person is the leader and leads the other person whose eyes are closed all the way to the Labyrinth.

I close my eyes and hold her hand. This is the first time I’ve ever held her hand so it’s a great feeling – like having a big sister, someone to have my back.

“Ok. You’re almost there,” she says.

I’m better at leading than I am at being led. I walk, pretending to be cool and confident but having my eyes closed as I near the edge of the Canyon, is a bit like saying “Oh, I’m fine with falling to my death. I trust you, though, really. I do.”

“Ok, just a little further.”

I step cautiously. My body hit’s up against a metal rail. It’s cold.

I hold it.

“OK. Open, ” she says.

I open my eyes and there it is – the Grand Canyon. Vastest of the vast. All I can muster to say is,  “Wow. Oh, my God. Wow. Amazing. Wowza. Beautiful. Wow. ”

It’s Easter Sunday and this view is like a new frontier an Easter egg hunt.

My niece, Sophie, age 5, told me on my cell, as we past Sedona,

“We had an Easter egg hunt and I couldn’t find one egg but I found most of them!”

I feel the same way. As if this is one of the missing eggs: The Natural beauty of the West and the Grand Canyon.

Staring at the Canyon I kept being like Kermit the Frog – big eyes, soft smile – what the heck I had no idea?! It was this big! I get tingly standing there. The same tingly as having a crush on someone mixed with a fear of heights and the thought, This canyon was hatched 2 billion years ago?

My mind can’t visualize or hold 2 billion. (Can you?)

The sun appears and the sky clears. I offer to take a picture of an Asian father and son. Tourist, speaking French, German, Swedish and Russian, all line up to get their pictures taken at the rim of the Canyon.

The vast depth and distance across the canyon gives me instant Alice and Wonderland feeling.  I’m sure; I could reach out and touch the other side. Hey, no matter, it’s only 18 miles across. I swear it’s as close as the French tourist in her leather jacket who keeps saying, “Don’t fall in – bon jour!”

In the El Trovar lodge gift shop, Suzan finds a book called Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon –  Gripping accounts of all fatal mishaps in the most famous of the Worlds Seven Natural Wonders by Michael P. Ghiglieri and Thomas M. Myers

This sparked my morbid realization that people die here and that there is no safety rail.

I asked the cashier, “How many people fall in or die each year here?”

She smiles, as if I’ve asked from porn and says, “3 last year.”

I like to think of myself as an adventurous type – cutting edge – I’ll try anything once – cow-girl and yet the vast jaws of the Canyon; it’s Vishnu Basement (translation 2 billion years old) and Paleozoic Sedimentary Rock, and the water Colorado River – trump my ability to say the word “edge” with out humbling redefinition.

The strata of sky, desert landscape, and complete record of Earth’s history are all displayed in a museum at the canyons edge.

Suzan and I pause at the rim of the world to enjoy Mother Nature’s yoga over the ages.

The water of the Colorado River is the life-blood of the Canyon and continues to carve its evolution.

Suzan and I walked the 2 mile rim walk. When I say rim. I mean like the actual rim.

Which scares the sh– out of me, given that there’s no railing.

I stay back on the side walk looking for the shuffle board and Oreo’s.

All the times I’ve ever said to a class of yoga students, “Feel your edge,” seemed pathetically cliché in the face of this new edge.

And yet, it illuminates how much being at the edge demands one to trust oneself.

I trust and dare my self, long enough for Suzan and I to snap a few yoga poses at the rim.

All the while the alarm in my head is going off: “Step away from the edge! Step away from the edge!”

An energetic, hyper-alert, happy medium between the fear of falling, mixed with a focus on the rocks, birds, trees and each layer of the canyon.

The canyons erosion, from Kaibab (the light sandy layer) to the hermit Shale (the orange rusty layer) to the famous Red wall Limestone (the dark red rock layer) all the way down the Colorado River, gave me a new gives me the experience an openness to life. Life and Death hand in hand.

I was hatching not only this geological perspective, but a new family relationship with Suzan and Lynn.

On the way back to Phoenix Suzan told me stories all about her grandmother, Jenny – loved to meditate and make pickled watermelon rinds. And Lynn invited me to see the Phillies.

And according to the in –flight article the chicken did come fist.