Okay, here goes folks…

I am moving to San Francisco, CA in about 3 weeks. Now, I have known I’m moving there for almost 3 months, but I haven’t really done the grand announcement. I have mainly just told those it pertains to. But here I am doing the grand announcement just weeks before it happens. And just in time for the holidays none-the-less. Seems to be my life these days. LOL!

I am incredibly excited by this decision and am so looking forward to the move. Yes, it’s a bit scary… “San Francisco is so expensive, how will you make it there?” I don’t have a lot of the answers at this moment. The short version of the story is that I have thought about moving back to San Francisco more times than I can remember in the past 25 years. Ever since I moved away in 2000 really. But for whatever reason, each time I thought about it, I did not follow through with it.

Then about 3 months ago I got a call that one of the people dearest to me was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. I think it was at that moment when my heart knew we were moving back there to be with my Beloveds. When I arrived for what ended up being his death - I kept checking with my heart to make sure this is indeed what it wanted. It could not have had more clarity about it - the answer was always YES! It still is.

My past experiences of following the wisdom of the heart (no matter how scary it has been) was that it was exactly the thing I needed to do. And so… I will follow my heart. I don’t know that I “left my heart in San Francisco” when I moved all those years ago, but I definitely want to bring it back there now.

A Buddhist I looked up wrote, “The path forward, then as now, is not escape but return.” Sharon Salzberg has said, “The healing is in the return.” I have been returning quite a lot the past few years. Returning back to the midwest. Returning to my family of origin. Returning back to Walla Walla.

I have also been returning to my mat. To movement. To stillness. To practicing compassion. To tapping into that great field called Love. To my spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional practices that helps me stay as well as I can be in each moment.

You can probably already tell you how excited I am to return to San Francisco. I’ll be returning to some of my nearest and dearest. My chosen family. I’ll be returning to being in a city I have a great history with. A city with a yoga culture - which means I can take classes in-person with master teachers again as well as hopefully have a large base of people who love yoga and are willing to pay for it (fingers crossed for teaching yoga there). I’ll be returning to a meditation community (Sangha) even though when last I lived there - I did not meditate. But sitting down on my cushion with others meditating with me is a return no matter where in the world I do it.

So here is to Returning!
May we Return to what helps us heal.
May we move away from that which does not.
May we find courage to do those things we are scared of, but we know are the “right” things to do.
May we connect/reconnect to those who help us feel like we matter.

Love ya,
SweetPea Johnson

PS - We will still be teaching a few classes on Zoom/online. Click on the picture below for more information..

The Healing Is In The Return