 Dear Friends,
Yesterday was the Spring Equinox, the marking of the official beginning of spring, when the day and the night are equal all over the world. Yesterday might have marked the specific day, but there have been signs of change these past several weeks. The birds have been more active, singing and foraging for food. The snowdrops and daffodils have sprung up these past several weeks. My favorite little yellow flowers have begun to blanket the floor of the park, making me smile as I meander past them. The days have gotten warmer and brighter. This past week in my neighborhood, droves of cherry trees have burst forth in blossom, lining streets and showing off their colors with bright pink blossoms. This season change has felt good, correct, needed in my own life personally. But, my friends, I know not all change feels good, correct, and needed right now. My dear friend, if you have change in your own life that simply doesn’t feel good right now, like many of us do, I hope you can continue to see and feel the change that does feel good, you can embrace the spaces in life that feel correct and stable, and you can breathe a little deeper and find a little more grounding in the spaces that might feel a bit more destabilizing today. Have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista
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 Dear Friends,
This past week my older son has been home for his spring break…and one of the fun and exciting things he got to do over his break this year was…wait for it…getting his wisdom teeth pulled. Now, I don’t know about you all, but when I got my wisdom teeth pulled years ago I was laid up and swollen for several days after said appointment. Not this kid. After a nice long nap that afternoon and a bath with epsom salts, he’s been totally fine. Minimal swelling, taking it a bit easier but mostly up to normal activities. Obviously his food has had to be modified, but other than that, the rest of his week has looked fairly normal. He and I were on a walk yesterday, enjoying a spectacular spring day by the creek, and as we were walking I was thinking about how different we all are. We might have the same or similar outside stimulus, and yet totally different reactions in our bodies and our minds. But, my friends, just because my son had an easier time with his surgery and recovery, doesn’t make my own lived experience less valid, and vice versa. We each get to have our own lived experiences. I think there are times we have a tendency to diminish our own experiences, or the experiences of those around us based on the erroneous conception that, because our stimulus was the same, our experiences must be also…but I think it’s important to let ourselves and those around us have our own, unique, lived experience. I hope you have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
I stumbled across this picture a few days ago, taken down by the wharf in DC after my kids jazz concert several years ago. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the world at times, and, I think for many, now is one of those times. I’ve been thinking about this picture over the past few days…and the thing that I keep coming back to is the fact that no one person can do everything…but everyone can do something. Everyone can do something. We can all do something to make the world better and brighter, we all have that ability. So, my dear friend, I encourage you to spread love, be a light, be a brightness in the world around you. When you’re feeling overwhelmed and scared, when you’re feeling like there’s nothing you can do to help the world around you, know you can make a difference. There are ways we can show up in the world and make it even a little better. And speaking of overwhelming times, please know, if you find yourself financially unstable, but want to keep or start a movement practice, please reach out. I feel so wildly grateful for all my students who allow me to keep doing this work that I love, and I value the work I do and I know you all value the work that I do, but please know all you need to do is reach out and we can work something out together. Have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Cultivating carefree in our lives doesn’t have to be big and transformative, it can be small and every day. The little things matter, they add up, they make a difference. This week, cultivating carefree for me looked like getting a couple of bird feeders so my cat and I could sit and watch the birds in the front and the back of the house. Cultivating carefree meant intentionally going for a walk in the woods with a friend, and exploring an art museum with my son. It was purposefully sitting and watching the sunset one night. Cultivating carefree looked like cleaning my house so I could sit and relax without thinking I needed to do something. It meant making enough food so I’d have leftovers and therefore wouldn’t have to think about food very much this week while still feeding myself well. None of those cultivations solved anything that is going on in the world right now…and, my friends, the anxiety surrounding us is real and oppressive…and for many directly affects lives. And yet, while those cultivations may not solve anything that is going on in the world, I do think they allow us as individuals to show up for ourselves, those around us, and the world at large in a fuller and healthier way…and it’s really important to show up for ourselves, those around us and the world right now. My dear friend, I hope, this week, you can be a little more intentional about finding ways to bring joy to your life, cultivating a bit more carefree along the way. Have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
This past week I had the deep privilege of leading a retreat to the beautiful Costa Rica for a week. It was a fabulous week of connection, adventure, rest, yoga and movement, fantastic food that appeared magically and just plain fun. Mid-week, as I was floating in the pool with a few other ladies, one of my retreat goers said this week was the most carefree she thinks she’s been since she was a child. That statement has been turning over in my mind ever since. Obviously we can’t live in a state of carefree all the time, we have responsibilities and daily tasks that have to get done. We have a life that has to be lived. We have to feed and clothe ourselves and those with whom we’re responsible for. But, my friend, I think there is a deep benefit in finding spaces of carefree…and I wonder how it might feel in our minds and our bodies if we spent a little more time stepping away and cultivating carefree spaces even in the midst of our very real responsibilities. I do think that, while it might help, we don’t have to exit our lives to cultivate carefree spaces. I think we can cultivate those spaces of carefree while living in the here and now, even in the midst of times that feel overwhelming and stressful. I hope, this week, that you are able to find a little more carefree in your own life, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Back in 2017 some dear friends and my family made the trek to North Carolina to watch the total solar eclipse. It was a wonderful time, connecting with some who were close, and getting to know others with whom we didn’t know quite as well. The cabin I rented us butted up to a river nestled at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains. This cabin, while adorable, was also a bit quirky in its set-up…with no internet or cell service to be had. We had a great deal of fun playing games, cooking, floating down the river during the days we were there before the eclipse, we were able to witness an epic total solar eclipse that got all of us fairly "eclipse addicted" and then after the eclipse we went our separate ways and headed back to our lives. One of my friends really took that “forced analog” time to heart though. She noticed how much better it felt in her body and her mind to be disconnected from the fast-paced news cycle that is a constant in our world and especially in our region, and she chose to continue that disconnect, to a lesser degree, when she came back to her everyday life. And my friends, if asked she would be the first to tell you that she has been happier since because of that change. I think there’s a way we can both stay informed and show up, while also not allowing the information, stress and anxiety to be a constant in our lives, and allowing ourselves to step away and get some relief. I hope you have an amazing week, my friends. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
What do we do when we’re living in the midst of stress and anxiety? How do we allow ourselves to regulate? I don’t know about you, but I’ve personally had a hard time decoupling from the intensity of this space and time. I find myself anxious and overwhelmed on the regular and emotional regulation has been hard to come by. A few days ago I stepped outside to take the trash out, and stumbled upon a glorious sunset. Instead of going back inside, I decided to take a walk right then and there, go analog for a bit, enjoy the rest of the sunset, and find a little time and space outdoors. We are not meant to be surrounded by information constantly. Our bodies need time to regulate, to process, to allow our nervous systems to calm so we can continue showing up for ourselves and those around us. Because, at the end of the day, it’s absolutely important to keep showing up for ourselves and those around us. This coming week I’m taking a group on a retreat to Costa Rica, where I’m hopeful we can all take a little time off and recharge so that when we get home we can continue to show up for those who need us. My friends, if you’re having a hard time regulating this week, I hope you can find some time to go analog for a bit, to move your body in a way that feels good and nourishing, and to breathe a little deeper. I hope you find amazing in your week ahead. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
This past week my oldest client, Ms. Ruth, coming in at 102 years young, passed away. While I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t expected, it still makes me sad to know I won’t see her anymore. I started seeing Ms. Ruth when she was 94 years young, and, if we’re being honest, I didn’t expect our relationship to last as long as it did. But it did, and I cannot tell you how special my time with her was. Every week I looked forward to seeing her and connecting with her. Every week, after a happy accidental meeting of the foreheads one week years ago, as we said Namaste at the end of our practice, we would gently touch our foreheads together, connect, say “boom” and laugh. She was someone so very special, that Ms. Ruth. One day, years ago, she expressed trepidation over a time in the future when her body might not be able to continue to do the movements we were currently doing in our movement practice. She was worried that if she couldn’t continue to do the same movements we had been doing, we would need to stop practicing altogether. I reassured her and we talked about how, even if we needed to modify our movements or make them different, there was always movement we could do. It might look and feel different, but that doesn’t make the movement less important. And through the years her movement did shift, it did change, it looked different than it once did…and even in that change, movement helped her stay strong and capable until the very end. There are times we all get discouraged when our bodies won’t do the same thing they used to do…and I think that discouragement is, at times, the reason we might discontinue our movement practices. But my friends, even if our bodies might not move the same way they used to, even if our bodies might look and feel different, that doesn’t mean our movement practice is any less important. My dear friend, I hope, as you move through your day, that you can find gratitude for your strong and capable body, even if it might feel different then it once did. Have an amazing day. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
What sort of tools can we have in our back pocket when we’re faced with fear and anxiety? This past week I had a few phone calls I had to make with various IRS offices because I kept getting passed around from office to office while trying to get an answer to my question. While sometimes necessary, it wasn’t my favorite way to pass my time. After the first couple phone calls when they inevitably gave me a different number to call, I started to get irritated. As I noticed those emotions I started practicing my deep breathing and noticed my body start to calm a bit. Certainly, my deep breaths didn’t fix my problem, they didn’t get me off the phone with the IRS, but they sure did help calm me in the moment. Figuring out ways to self soothe when we’re anxious, angry, irritable, it won’t fix the issues we’re facing. And yet, those tools can make a big difference in our own lives in the moment when we’re feeling those big emotions. Perhaps it’s practicing our deep and calm breathing when we’re feeling those emotions. Maybe it’s finding a change of scenery, taking a walk or finding some movement in our bodies. Perhaps it’s taking some time to cuddle with an animal or getting a nice long hug. Maybe it’s purposefully noticing something beautiful around you. Perhaps it’s taking a bath with epsom salts to help calm and soothe. Maybe it’s meeting up with a friend. Finding ways to self soothe isn’t going to be a long-term solution to our big emotions, but it can help in the moment, it can help calm us and make us feel better in our bodies and our minds. My dear friend, if you are feeling big emotions this week, I hope you can find ways to self soothe in the midst of those emotions. Have an amazing week. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Last Friday I unexpectedly played hooky for the day (thank you for understanding!!!) and my boys and I went to White Grass in West Virginia to play in the winter wonderland that the world had turned into. It was one of Andrew’s last few days before he went back to school, and both of my boys had plans on Saturday, so Friday was the only time a little road trip with the three of us was going to happen before Andrew headed back on Sunday. It was just a spectacular day. Yes, for sure, it was a lot of driving, but I do love a good road trip, so it didn’t bother me to driving 6 hours and change in a day. But the world, the world around us was absolutely blanketed in snow, just absolutely and utterly blanketed. Conditions were perfect, the weather was perfection, and we had an absolutely wonderful time cross country skiing. I had gotten out skiing in my neighborhood a couple of times earlier in the week with the snow storm, which was so much fun and absolutely amazing, but nothing compared to the Narnia-like world we skied through last Friday in West Virginia. Sometimes my friends, sometimes opportunities arise...and sometimes we’ve just got to take said opportunities. Funny story, I wrote practically this exact same blog post this time last year, and only realized it when I looked up my blog post heading…and yet it still holds true, even when I’m a bit repetitive…sometimes opportunities arise, and sometimes we ought to just take them. I hope you have an amazing week my friend…and if an opportunity arises, I hope you take it. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
This past week we got a big snowstorm in the DMV that shut down the area for a few days and blanketed our region with a beautiful layer of snow. I knew if the snow panned out like the weather reporters said it would, I wanted to get out cross country skiing on Monday after work…so Sunday night I traipsed to my shed and transferred my skis and my boots from the shed to the house so I could be prepped and ready to go on Monday…because while the desire for skiing was there, I also knew I wasn’t going to want to traipse to the shed after snow had fallen. Sometimes our movement practices are really hard to show up for, and it can feel near impossible to find motivation to move…but I wonder if we take a little time to prep, maybe making our space pretty and inviting, perhaps thinking about what space and place in our house feels most motivating, perhaps putting clothes out the night before, or making a plan for ourselves or with a friend the day prior for what our movement practice will look like…perhaps if we do those things we can make showing up for our movement practices a little bit easier, a little more obtainable. That being said, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”, and while I do think taking some time to think about and prep for our movement practices can be helpful, I personally think practicing non-judgement towards ourselves when we inevitably miss our self-imposed mark is an even more important practice…and it is a practice, my friends. Have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
How are you feeling, these first few days into this new year? I have never much been a resolution person. In fact, I would say my particular personality, while not rebellious in many ways, rebels against the resolution…if I resolve to do something, there’s a good chance I will do the opposite. And so for years, because of that, resolutions were not part of my holiday practice. However, in the past several years I’ve been trying to soften around the thought of pausing, noticing, and taking stock as the old year closes and the new year begins. I do think there is real value in the practice of taking stock, so long as I can do so without judgement and with grace and love. So while I might never become a resolutions person, for the past several years I have begun to try to integrate ways of noticing, taking stock and shifting without resolving. As I took stock of last year, the thing I noticed was how fast I had to move, how full my life and my brain had to be all the time. Now, I don’t regret having a full, fast life this past year…I had many moving parts that had to be completed, and it was a space I had to be in…but as I think about this year and moving into a different space and time when I have the ability to take things a little slower, that is my intention. My intention, in this coming year, is to slow down. My dear friend, do you have any intentions this coming year? If so, I hope you can hold those intentions with grace and love and without judgement, no matter the outcome. Have an amazing week, and a very happy new year. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
I hope this week filled with various holidays, as we head towards the close of this year and the beginning of the new year ahead, finds you well, content, joyful, and perhaps with a little bit of breathing room. This past week I took off work with absolutely no agenda. It’s a rare thing for me, taking off work for a whole week when I have no plans to travel…but I decided, after many many months of an over-full life with multiple moves and fixer-uppering, high school graduations, college decisions and life changes, that this was what I wanted…a little downtime, a little pause with zero agenda. Yes, there are still things on my moving to-do list…but they’ll still be there when this week is over. It’s been lovely, this zero agenda…full of too much food and little movement to go with it. Late nights and late mornings. Hanging with my boys and sitting with my cat. Listening to my boys and their friends cackle downstairs. Cooking with my sister and brother-in-law. Movies, books and some games. Spending a whole day in cozy onesie pajamas. And a little bit, but not too much, responsibility. And as I move toward this new year, one thing I am resolved to do is to take a few more pauses in my own life on the regular…to slow down and breathe, to give myself space to sit. Yes, the full and the fast was a necessary part of the last phase of my life, but now that I can, I will slow down, breathe, and pause. My dear friends, I hope, if you are able, you can give yourself a little more space and permission to slow down, breathe and pause this week. Have an amazing week and a very happy New Year. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Tomorrow is the winter solstice…the shortest, darkest day of the year and the ushering in of a new season and the return of the light. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we combat that physical darkness. This time of year many put up brightly colored lights and decorate our houses. Sure, those actions come with a certain amount of stress and rush, but for many the act of decorating and celebrating is a balm and a way to combat a dark time in the year. Earlier this week, a friend and I were driving home on a dark and rainy night. As we were driving, a brightly lit jeep came up beside us. It was top to bottom covered in lights, a beacon of light and color in a dark and stormy night. It was a lot, there is no doubt that it was a lot…and it just made me smile, it made me happy to see that brightly colored and lit up…one might say gaudy…jeep. My dear friend, if your particular season is slanting towards a bit of darkness, I hope that you can find pockets of light, color, brightness and joy amidst that darkness. Have an amazing week my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
This past weekend I unexpectedly had both my boys home. On Saturday afternoon we randomly decided to hop in the car and go down to DC to the botanical gardens to see the holiday train display before it closed up for the evening. As we were driving away from said gardens, we noticed a phenomenal sunset in the making. We flipped around and parked, got out and watched as the sky deepened into reds, pinks, yellows and oranges all around us. This sunset was an absolutely and utterly spectacular display of colors. This is the time of year, this time when life is a little colder, as we approach the shortest and darkest day of the year…it is the time of year when our bodies and minds would like us to take life a little slower, a little less rushed. I don’t know about you, but slower has never been my lived experience this time of year. Life feels fuller and faster. But whether you’re able to take life a little slower, and a little less rushed, or whether your experience is fuller and faster and a bit more frenetic then you would prefer, I think we can all find spaces to pause, to stop, to notice and to watch a beautiful sunset when the opportunity presents itself. My dear friend, whether your season is fast or slow, I hope you are able to take some pauses. Have an amazing week. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
I made a big pot of lentil soup earlier this week with broth from my Thanksgiving turkey bones and lentils from my 25 pound bag of emergency lentils. Yes, you read that correctly, a 25 pound bag of emergency lentils. So, at the very beginning of the pandemic, I, like many of us across the world, didn’t know what was going to happen and had a certain level of stress due to that lack of perceived control. In that stress, I convinced myself that I needed to buy a 25 pound bag of lentils…because, well, dry lentils have a long shelf-life and the fear of food scarcity was real. Did I ever need said lentils? No, no I didn’t. They sat in my basement on a shelf, used when I would think about them, forgotten about a good deal of the time. And now, almost 5 years later, I can see the bottom of the bag…we are coming to the end of my era of emergency lentils. While I didn’t ever need said lentils, I have no regrets about purchasing them. They were a purchase that allowed me to feel a certain amount of relief and control in a time that felt very out of control and scary. My dear friend, if there are areas in your life right now that feel a little out of control and scary, I hope you can find pockets of relief amidst those times…even if said relief comes in the form of a 25 pound bag of lentils. I hope you have an amazing week, my friend! Love Krista  Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. It can turn an existence into a real life, and disconnected situations into important and beneficial lessons. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Gratitude makes things right.
-Melody Beattie  Dear Friends,
Yesterday, I was driving through the park as I was headed to a client's house. As I took a turn onto beach drive, the underbrush below the tall, bare trees was suddenly so stunning I felt like I had to stop…and with a few minutes of wiggle room in my schedule I got out of my car, wandered into said underbrush and for a few brief moments was instantly surrounded by color. It was like I wandered into some magical fairyland. We are coming into the week of Thanksgiving…and while I know holidays are, for some, a joy-filled time, I recognize for others they aren’t always the most joyful. Sometimes holidays contain stress and tension, sometimes it’s just a lot. But whatever your holiday experience is, whatever your holiday week looks like this year, I hope you can take some time to stop, take some time to see and notice the little things you can be grateful for…perhaps finding the color and the magic in your experience, even if it is for a brief moment in time. I hope you have an amazing week, my friend. I am so incredibly grateful for you. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
As some of you know, I moved this past weekend, yes, again. This time, with much excitement, to my permanent place…no more moving for the foreseeable future for me! I’ve set up three different studio spaces prior to this one…and one feature of all three prior spaces was me “fighting the light”. At various times in the day, the light would shine directly into my studio, and so it was always a battle to keep the light from coming in. Prior to my move last weekend, when I was thinking about which room to use for my bedroom and which room to use for my studio, I realized the bigger room in the house was on the back of the house, where I can potentially keep my blinds open all year long and get wonderful indirect sunlight all day, but never fight with the direct sunlight. As I’ve been thinking about this the past several days, as I’ve been enjoying looking at the trees outside my window as I’ve been teaching, I’ve been thinking about how those small annoyances are just that, they’re just small annoyances. And yet, those small annoyances sometimes add up, they sometimes have the power to eat away at us and create stress and irritation. Sometimes we have no choice but to keep moving forward even in those spaces of small annoyances…but I think there are times when we can think creatively to mitigate some of those small annoyances and create a little less stress and irritation in our lives. I hope you have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista  Dear Friends,
Last Tuesday at twilight, after my son and I voted, we went for a walk in the woods. The world around us was getting dark and less clear and the colors more monotone throughout our meander as we strolled down the trail in the park. As in any election, for many, the change earlier this week was perhaps not what we wanted, and the anxiety of last week has not been assuaged. While I don’t pretend to have an answer, I think turning inward, focusing on our gratitude in a tangible way goes a long way. I think turning outward, and staying in our movement and our breath goes a long way also. They help us show kindness, love and respect to the world around us. They help us move through the world with more peace. They help us see the beauty in the world, in our lives. They help calm us. My dear friend, may we see the beauty in the world around us a little more this week. May we show up to our lives with a little more love, kindness and respect. May we be at peace. Have an amazing week, my friend. Love Krista |
Hi, I'm Krista!Krista Mason is a movement instructor based in Washington DC. She founded an online strength, yoga and movement studio, teaches group classes, hosts both local and overseas retreats, hangs out with private clients, and absolutely loves the work she gets to do. Archives
March 2025
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