05/26/2026
It’s been 503 days since the Eaton Fire, the flames reaching up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit in some places, tore through my neighborhood, my home, and over one hundred years of my family’s life stories.
You can do a lot in 503 days. You can heal a bone, learn a new skill, build a house if you have the means. In 503 days I’ve managed to find a steady place to live for my family, I’ve re-acquired many of the necessaries (beds to sleep in and dishes to eat on). We got to travel a bit, build back some semblance of normalcy in work and school, but still, in many ways, I’ve still been just treading water.
Thankfully, I’m still breathing. In and out through the nose. I’m feeling my feet on the earth. I’m standing steady both metaphorically and literally, and I’m really starting to understand, in my bones, after 30 years of teaching and practicing that this is it.
Through success and tragedy and all the in between this is the answer and the question to life.
This yoga practice of asana, breathing, and meditation is how I’ve gotten through the last 503 days without completely losing myself. Honestly, it’s how I’ve gotten through the last 30 years.
It’s how I get through this place of asymmetry, a childhood of abandonment and chaos, a lack of stability, betrayal, illness, and loss.
Still, I’m okay. Honestly, finding the “okay” in it all, again and again, this is the deepest work I know.
In those first few days after the fire I realized nothing I did was going to fix the situation, even my years of yoga practice. It was having permission to not fix it; to breathe, to chant, to sit in the uncertainty of it all. That was the thing that would get me through it. I could survive day 1,
day 5,
day 503,
and I have.
Every time my mind pulls me back into the weight of my loss, my breath brings me back. It’s become a reliable a buoy in my life now.
This is why I still teach. Exploring our ability to not be perfect, or to escape but learn how to stay.
Maybe 504 days will lead me to someone else who needs a moment to breathe, a reminder to be present, that even after losing everything, life is still here, possibilities abound, full of experience, worth it.
If you’re looking for that kind of space, come practice with me.
Weekly Live Hatha Flow Yoga on Zoom
Sunday 9:30-10:45 AM PT,
Tuesday and Wednesday 8:30-9:30 AM PT
and if you’re in the Los Angeles area June 13th
Restorative Yoga and Sound Bath workshop with me and Melissa Nadal.
Link Below.
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