Paris at last

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. “  Ernest Hemmingway(1899-1961)

It’s hard to believe I’ve only spent a week in Paris thus far.  Truly, it has been a feast. A feast of cuisine, language, culture, history, and even spirituality.    I actually managed to find the Sivananda Yoga Center here, which is the tradition with which I will do my teacher training in India.  Talk about an exercise in mindfulness. I’ve only taken a few classes in this tradition back in LA, and now I’m taking them in French!  So between trying to remember the sequence of poses, deciphering the vocabulary, and focusing on my breath, I was starting to feel little bit like Lucy and the conveyer belt of chocolates.  

Feeling overwhelmed, as I’ve recently learned,  is only a  temporary feeling.  It’s actually a mind.  A mind that can be controlled with patience and mindfulness.  So my challenge this week has not been to not get frustrated, since that is inevitable when trying to adapt to all things new.  Rather, to observe the feeling as it arises and attempt to patiently accept it.   Accept that I am in a foreign country, adapting to its culture.  So spending 40 minutes trying to figure out how to make a phone call, getting lost in the rain looking for my school, after asking 3 different people for directions, and just getting lost in general, are merely opportunities to practice the mindfulness of patient acceptance.   Not yet quite there, ;).

The pictures I’ve attached are from my day at Sacre Coeur and Montmarte, the highest point in Paris.  It was a spectacular fall day, as is today.  Beautiful blue sky,  50 degrees, surrounded by the smell of pastries and the sounds of language.  As the French say, “rien ne me rend plus heureux”. Nothing makes me happier.