Hope you all had a good start to the year! The holidays can be pretty intense, involving lots of eating, sitting and socializing with family and friends. In the middle of this, we also need some time for relaxation and reflection. I often find that there is little to no time left for this during Christmas itself, and first in the days before and after New Year's Eve I start to look back and set new goals. 

When I was a kid, I had these padlock-sealed diaries that I wrote in every so often. Nowadays, I treasure these books so much. When I go back home in summer, and happen to find any of these books, it is both sweet and fascinating to read about the things my 10-year-old self was preoccupied with. These days, I collect a lot of thoughts, ideas and learnings randomly in various notebooks throughout the year. That said, these notes are often scribbled between yoga sequences and to do lists and how could I ever separate these thoughts and events if I didn't write it down in a more structured way?

For this reason, every year I sit down for a few days (yes it does take a while) to write down what happened in my life from month to month and most importantly how I felt about it. This provides a unique opportunity to look back and better understand what's been going on over the last 12 months. 2015 has been A LOT; settling in a new country, beginning a new job, starting to teach yoga, developing my yoga practice, building new friendships, getting married and much much more.

I think the best way to set new goals, is to first look back to see what has happened.

Ask yourself:

What moments and friendships did I cherish? What projects am I inspired to take further? What gave me value, health and happiness in 2015? How can I do more of that? What else do I want to bring into my life?

I actively follow quite a few writers and sites that have published posts on how to best meet this new year, and how to keep your resolutions.. In truth, we can actually evaluate and set goals at any time during the year. That being said, now is always a good time - and better than later.

I think the best takeaways from the articles I've read are these:

Make the goals measurable and clear. For example, if you want to bring more happiness into your life. Then write down a list of the things that make you happy. 

Stake out a goal of how much time to dedicate to this each day or week:
 
1. Meditate 5 minutes - eg. each morning or night every day for two weeks
2. Go out with friends at least once a week
3. Try a new recipe or dish every week
4. Drink hot lemon water every morning
5. Commit to a 10 minutes simple stretch routine every morning or night

Write down the goals and share the goals with your partner or friend. When we share the goals with someone, the goals become more real.

Believe in yourself. We all have moments of doubt. On any journey, there is always gonna be some obstacles along the way, this includes moments of doubts, laziness or falling back to an old habit. But if the mind is focused, then we are far less likely to get entangled and lost as a consequence of such obstacles. For me, some of the best ways I know to refocus is to talk to a friend, exercise or meditate. 

As I was writing and thinking about Doubt, this one popped up in my Youtube feed. Blige and Swift for you all. 

Stay humble and allow for happiness in any shape or form!

Love,
Karin

Last weekend I went to my first Californa festival. I was pretty excited about it. Some of my favourite bands were playing. Need I say that I was not disappointed? I arrived quite late after a full day of yoga history, not to complain, I loved it, but I felt pretty exhausted. The low evening sun beamed a magical light over the festival area. The young crowd was welcoming with their smiley faces. In the ticket line I felt the excitement spreading throughout my body and as soon as the bag search was over I started started to jog towards the stages. Only to be stopped by a final security guard that apparently wanted to scan my ticket first. Oops, I almost started my festival experience by being run after by security. Nice!

The first performance was Tv on the Radio, which I have seen before. But that was some time ago. In a completely different setting, or let's say forest, in nothern Sweden. It was, as you can imagine, a very different experience. The performance had a Tv on the Radio-like intensity to it, and they played a nice mix of old and new songs. As they were playing the sun went lower and lower, and there was a golden glow over the heads of the swaying and at times dancing audience. As the the last palm tree lost its touch of golden we headed to the second stage for Poliça.

I was standing on someone's picknick blanket and I got lost. The transfers between each song were mezmerising. Instead of falling in and out of the songs, the rythmic transformative flow in each song emphasised their relationship to one another. Like seeing someone combine ten different outfits with some reoccuring pieces, getting to love these pieces more and more, seeing how they come out so different each time.

As for all concerts, there is an end. Which made me kind of sad, so we decided to take a little break for touring the festival area. I'm glad we did, because we found an awesome silent disco, the DJ was really great. He almost convinced me that silent disco is better than a conventional disco. I thought about it as we headed to the food trucks for some food. They sold healthy SF green juices, young coconuts with a straw and American style pizza. I had to take my latest obsession, a warming naan bread burrito filled with garbanzo stew.

As Alt-J finished his performance on the main stage, we headed to the smaller stage to wait for Washed out; the guy from Georgia who wanted to become a librarian but didn't secure a job and instead moved back to his parents and began to create music. He told us Washed Out has been touring for one and a half years and this was there last performance of the tour. It was brilliant. As it happens on festivals, we had to leave before the last song to make our way to Massive Attack. We found a very good spot just in middle and quite at the front. Damien had seen them once before in Lyon in the early 2000s. And they had the same pictures streaming in the background. Come on? But apart from that, I really enjoyed it. Especially when our hopes were fulfilled and Tunde Adebimpe from TVOTR entered the stage to sing Pray for Rain. Pure magic, and a perfect fit for the California drought. They must have thought about that.

And best of all, it worked, because when I opened my curtains the day after, it was raining.  Thank you Treasure Island, I'll be back!