Last night I did something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I quit teaching. More specifically, I've stopped teaching my public classes during the week.

This is a very big deal for me. I have been holding weekly classes at various studios for 15 years, and it's so surreal that next week no classroom will await me. There are, however, a lot of other things on my plate and I'm going to now use the time between teaching workshops to focus on taking care of the details that maintain my career: writing, planning curriculum, creating new content, and making meetings. I'd also like to fit in a social life!

I know that I'm lucky and blessed to be making this decision at all. Yet walking away from my classes was a real challenge for me. I adore my students, many of whom have been with me for years, and at any other time in my career, I would have been over the moon to have a room full of eager faces awaiting me each night. But it's not doing anyone any favors when I'm gone for three weeks at a time. You just can't cultivate consistent relationships that way.

I find that the more I work toward my dreams, the reality of living my yoga gets more intense. The types of choices I must make have shifted that way too. It used to be that my options were more clear-cut, between something I wanted and something I didn't. For example, I once had to pick whether I wanted to become a telemarketer for a tobacco company or teach yoga at a popular studio.

Now, as I refine my options, it's getting tougher to tell which road is best. Like this choice: Giving up my weekly classes in order to fully focus between travel engagements, or trying to do it all and reaping the benefits of every possible teaching opportunity. It's often easier when the choices life presents to us are no-brainers, but how do we navigate the ones that are confusing?

Yoga teaches us that there can be bhavana, or a healing quality, to the choices we make and actions we take. I say "can be" because we also have the power to choose the path of duhkha, or suffering. In my own experience, I see each fork in the road as an opportunity to do something that's either constructive or destructive to my ultimate goals of creativity, health, love, and happiness.

And, like anything in life, which direction your next step follows depends on a variety of factors. You must take into account your goals, core values, state of vitality, personal needs, other opportunities, and your current circumstances. A year ago, giving up my classes would have been ludicrous and potentially harmful to my goal of teaching only yoga. But now, the responsibility and energy they require is keeping me from giving my full attention to the other responsibilities I've taken on.

When you keep moving towards bhavana, and walking the way of more life, more love, and more freedom, you'll begin to see that even the most seemingly unclear choices suddenly come into sharper focus. Do you want the chocolate cake or the salad? The answer to both questions may be yes, each for good reasons. But which is going to invite in your highest, most integrity-filled and conscious self-expression? It depends. And which choice is right, right now, is entirely up to you.

Core Pose: Root Release

I teach this posture to help students access the healing energy at their source. You can do it between poses or any time you want to unlock and unleash the creative, nourishing, vital force that's found in the pelvic area.

Lie on your back. Bend your knees and cover your kneecaps with your palms. Press down strongly on your knees so the thighbones deepen into the hip joints. You want to ground through the leg bones, not pull the knees into your chest as you do in some other poses.

Relax your legs and hips completely, and, maintaining the downward pressure on your knees, roll your legs in circles, shake them out, and dissolve any areas of tension you might have accumulated during your practice or your day.

Enjoy the root release for one minute then move on to your next adventure.