nyc: drawing circles

Full Moon tonight over Brooklyn, NYC.

Returning to Japan after a year was an incredible experience, showing me how much I can change and grow between summers. How incredibly resilient the heart is, how it strengthens and expands with struggle—and, of course, love. How we are built to overcome such struggles and from them heal. How self-confidence and self-belief can bloom from such small seeds. 

What a year it has been, full of blessings, full of incredible travels and adventures, amazing new connections, and most of all the opportunities to share what I love so dearly, and through teaching learn so much myself.

So, here I am finding myself drawing circles, leaving Japan for New York to attend my sister’s wedding--a landmark visit filled with celebration as she marks a new phase of her life.

Moreover, New York is where I started this blog, just a little over 3 years ago. 

It was my first stop after pulling out my roots from my idyllic tropical island home in the Philippines and deciding that, for the time being, I would live in the world. Little did I know that I would still be on the road, that the simple desire to seek out love would turn into the biggest romantic adventure—with myself!; that the act of humbly surrendering as a yoga student would turn me into a teacher; that by letting go of that I knew, of all that made me feel secure, I would feel more myself, more comfortable in my own skin and in the world around me.

So, Hello, New York City!, one of the first places I ever traveled to by myself in my teens, one of the first places to truly thrill me, that ignited my thirst for adventure and living. Here I am back in New York. A beautiful full moon evening. Here I am once again drawing circles, discovering that each end is a beginning...