Nothing like a bee sting to interrupt your Zen.

I raise my hand in the lawn for a seated twisted yoga pose.  My waist is wrung out like a wet rag. I think I’m so graceful, my fingers reaching for sky. My arm moves in slow motion toward the grass. I’m fully in the moment, describing the pose to my students step-by-step. The gaze comes last and with my head and neck aligned with the spine there is no reason to look down.

When my hand reaches the earth, it meets a bee. I’m stung. My yogi mind observes. It says, “You have been stung by a bee.”  Yes, I have been stung, it hurts, and the class remains centered in the pose while I look down at my swollen finger and continue to cue.

It’s near the end of class and my non-yogi mind says, “Run! Get ice. Get Benadryl. Your throat will close. You will go into shock. You will die.”

We finish class. I ice my hand. I’m calm and surprised to be alive.

Have you ever been stung? I have...

It wasn’t the golden trimmings or the opulence of the mansion that struck me. It was the child strapped between roots, light hitting just the right way to reveal what nature had tried to hide.

The Banyan tree took over, growth by growth. A statue of a child is hidden inside it, on an estate that was made to look like Venice, Italy in Southwest Florida. Such is America.

Ringling (aka Ringling Bros. Circus) was a walking circus. His home has that clown-like feeling, creepy and disturbing, but mesmerizing.

What is the creepiest thing you ever saw? Did you ever visit a place and not even care what the brochure had to say? Did you ever find your own circus? This week’s prompt is dedicated to all the creepy things found in unlikely places. Write about what that means to you in the past, present or future.  Or you can tell the story of this child who has been stuck in a tree for decades.

What does it mean to be an expert?

It feels much better to be an expert at something than to sit in a room and feel completely lost, but being “lost” can be just the thing we need to grow.  Take some time today to get to know the expert in yourself and the expert inside people you know.  Is there a particular yoga pose you want to master? Is there a topic that you want to know inside and out?

In this week’s writing prompt, we are exploring what it means to be “an expert.”

What steps will it take to arrive at mastery?  One of the biggest lessons of working toward mastery is to realize that it’s okay to not be perfect at everything. There are plenty of experts you can call on.  Think about the experts in your life. Who would you call….

•  to be your scrabble partner
•  to help you escape
•  to help decorate your new apartment
•  to go surfing in Australia with you
• for a gluten-free appetizer recipe
• for a...

I mistakenly thought my friend was taking pictures of her toes. She had her feet up on the front seat’s armrest and her phone held up to her face while she reclined in back. We were on a three hour car trip upstate and I was learning all about Snapchat.

Snapchat (for those of you who have been living under a rock like me) is an app where you can add filters to a photo of someone so that they look like a member of the band KISS or have a jaw that is wider than a face. You can add flowers and face paint.

My friend took this pink floral filter of me (above). I loved the flowers dancing over my head! It made me think of the day before our trip when we sat by the hotel pool at the place where I teach yoga. A guest came up to us and asked if we wanted to try his “color blind” glasses. Of course, we did.

The glasses made the trees greener and the sky bluer. The pale pink flowers were now fuchsia. I didn’t want to give the glasses back. But I did.

Now it is Monday,...