Sometimes you attempt something hard, a little challenge to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. After all, most self-help gurus will tell you that is where growth happens: when you leave your safe space. Kim and I tried something demanding recently when Keystone Yoga hosted an arm balance workshop.

We’ve been practicing yoga for almost two years now, and we’ve experienced lots of benefits. Added flexibility, strength, and sometimes just the knowledge that you can do hard things. So when Keystone said they were having an arm balance workshop, I knew I wanted to try it and push a little harder. Plus, Child’s Pose or Downward Facing Dog are all well and good, but they don’t make for fun party tricks. When you are balancing yourself on two hands, in a slightly contorted shape like Flying Splits or One-Legged Crow, suddenly people pay attention.

I’m kidding, that’s not really why we wanted to do it. It was just fun to try! Holy cow, it was hard, though. After a solid 90 minutes of moving from Crow to Flying Splits to Flying Pigeon to Peacock, I was beat. I’m used to being sore after a good bike ride, row, or weight-lifting session, but after this class, my arm and shoulder muscles were sore for a solid 48 hours. I think that’s a good sign that we pushed ourselves outside of what’s normal for us and created opportunities to test what we were capable of, too!

And this Saturday at 9:30 am in the greenhouse, Kristen from Keystone will be leading our monthly Yoga in the Garden. Don’t worry, she will keep it to the basic practice! Kicking off your Saturday with yoga surrounded by delightful tropical plants is a great way to ground yourself and get a positive start to the weekend. Purchase tickets here. From 10 am to 1 pm (or sellout), Spellbound Sourdough will also be at the nursery selling mouthwatering sourdough bread and baked goods while Mi Cafecito Mobile Coffee Bar will have delicious caffeinated beverages to power up your day as well. We hope you will join us to get April in the garden off to a great start.

As we do roll into April, one of the things you may find in your garden is grasshoppers. They usually emerge at this time of the year, and as I was thinking about this newsletter, I had to chuckle because one of the last arm balance poses that we worked on was called Baby Grasshopper. You can see Kim giving us a great example of the pose in the picture below.

Grasshopper in yoga? Awesome. Grasshopper cookies? Delicious. Grasshoppers in your yard are not so great. And they can be hard to get rid of. See our Teaching Thursday on what to do with these annual pests.