Yoga + Soul Care with Abigail, Tauranga (2025)

09/06/2025

Look at this glorious early morning pink! Recently I led two workshops on spiritual formation at the Methodist Church of New Zealand’s Refresh Retreat for clergy and laypeople. The campground is absolutely gorgeous, especially as autumn transitions into winter. I shared about my work as a spiritual director and also guided the group through some of my favorite prayer practices. One thing that people always seem to love is how accessible and simple a breath prayer can be. Even when everything else feels out of reach or too hard, we can try breathing. Although I admit, even breathing feels hard in some seasons of life. But like I always used to say in my yoga classes, “If you’re here and you’re breathing, you’re doing it right!” Just wanted to share a little snippet. Life is full of kids and friends and dancing and music, but I’m also still a spiritual director. Always feel free to reach out if you’d like some support on your journey 🥰🙏🏼❤️

31/12/2023

I’m offering two opportunities for you to participate in a 2023 Year in Review workshop next week. We’ll use the Ignatian Examen as our tool to reflect on the past year while looking at our journals, calendars, and photos, going month by month in a meditative way. I’m hosting these donation-based workshops online and if you’re available, I’d love for you to join us. (These will not be recorded.) Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send over the details!

Session 1:
Wednesday Jan 3rd, 3:30pm NZ
(Tuesday Jan 2nd, 4:30pm Hawaii/ 8:30pm Central/ 9:30pm Eastern)

Session 2:
Saturday Jan 6th, 9:30-11:30am NZ
(Friday Jan 5th, 10:30am Hawaii/ 2:30pm Central/ 3:30pm Eastern)

28/12/2023

In years past I’ve led a “Year in Review” type workshop where we look back at the previous year using the practice of the Ignatian examen. I do it on my own every year and find it so meaningful. Would anyone be interested in joining me online sometime the first week of January for this? I anticipate it would last up to 2 hours. You’d need your calendar/planner, phone photos, and a journal, or whatever you used to schedule meetings, activities, vacations, etc and photos you took throughout the year! We’ll look back at 2023 in a reflective way going month by month, and look ahead to 2024 too 🙏🏼
Donation-based, everyone welcome regardless of spiritual tradition. This is a 16th century practice that is still wonderfully applicable to our lives today. Send me a message if you’re interested ❤️ (recent pic from Kuratau NZ)

27/12/2022

25 Dec: Immanuel. God with us. I posted on my stories the other day that I just wish you could all smell this cape jasmine; it is absolutely divine. I walked by it and was so overtaken with its scent that I made my kids run over and smell it too. They said, “Yes, we can smell it Mommy, we’ve been smelling it the whole time we’ve been playing outside!” Wow, isn’t it just like them to be aware of something so lovely as they go about their play (and so like me, to only just now notice)? As humans we tend to over complicate things but in recent years, I’ve been trying to imagine this “God-with-us-ness” as a sweet fragrance like jasmine or some other lovely thing (like grandma’s cookies baking or freshly cut basil or coffee brewing in the morning). We can’t ignore the hard work there is to be done in this world, but we also can’t work ourselves into a distracted numbness, losing sight (scent?) of the truth that God is indeed present here with us. I guess my questions for us today are a wondering of how we can balance the two, the working hard for important causes and the noticing of God’s presence in our lives. How do we do it? It’s an ongoing practice. Maybe you notice yourself leaning more one way than the other. Is there a small shift you can make to provide a bit more balance?

27/12/2022

24 Dec: Share. Growing up in the northern hemisphere, one of my favorite Christmas traditions was baking a bunch of different kinds of cookies. Simple sugar cookies that were then decorated with colorful frostings and sparkly sprinkles were always popular! We always made enough to share with all the extended family members and friends who came over and enough to take to all the holiday parties. I don’t bake as much in December now that I live in the southern hemisphere but I still make time for a few batches! What kinds of things do you like to share during the holiday season? What have people shared with you? This also has me thinking about our beautiful and messy lives and what we choose to share (and not share) with others. I do find that sharing with the right people helps me process things and heal in important ways. Who can you share your life with in this season? May you be seen and heard ❤️🙏🏼❤️

26/12/2022

23 Dec: Shelter. When I lived on Kaua’i I loved watching the ‘ōhi’a lehua trees flower with these bright red blossoms. They always reminded me of the pōhutukawa that New Zealand is famous for. One day I finally did a google search and found out they’re the same genus: metrosideros! This genus consists mostly of trees in the Pacific region and also includes the northern and southern rātā that I see a lot in NZ too. Now that I’m back in Aotearoa NZ, I see pōhutukawa all the time, and they’re even flowering right now. They’re flowering so much that the ground beneath them becomes bright red when their stamens fall to the ground! It made me happy on Kaua’i to think that I was still connected to NZ somehow through these trees, and it makes me happy here in NZ to feel connected to those I love on Kaua’i. I never thought a tree (or 2) could do that for me, but as I pay more and more attention to the cycles of nature and the world outside my door, I grow in connection to the places I try (and have tried) to call home. In this way, nature shelters me and allows me to feel at home in many places. What shelters you in this season? What has provided shelter for you in the past, and what provides it now? Are they connected somehow?

25/12/2022

22 Dec: Star. This isn’t a picture of a star (it’s a rainbow), but it’ll do! I love the part in the nativity story of following the star in search of hope, peace, joy, and love, maybe even justice, a sense of purpose, goodness of any kind. Sometimes we don’t even know what we’re looking for, just not “this”. I know the Christmas season isn’t joyous for everyone; it can be really hard if you’re experiencing loss, grief, distance from family, or any number of stressors. Like a star shines at night, look for a bit of light if you find yourself in the thick of darkness this time of year. There is brightness within each of us! Keep going, keep following the star; we love having you here with us 🌟🌟🌟

24/12/2022

21 Dec: Welcome. This word makes me think of hospitality, kindness, entry into a friend’s home, or maybe a new season of life in a new place. How does it feel to be warmly welcomed somewhere? What about the opposite? How can we welcome others with compassion and generosity? This beautiful boardwalk always welcomes me in with its greenery and nature smells varying with the seasons. What does welcome mean to you?

23/12/2022

20 Dec: Uncertainty. My family collects nativity scenes from around the world, and this is one we found at a little fair trade shop in Thailand. We have so many, and I love wondering about the thought that went into these as they were created in a particular place. Some retain elements of their country/culture, and some are more influenced by the traditional nativity scenes we see in the west. In this one, a cow has a face like a dog, and I kind of wish there was an elephant instead, but it’s beautiful all the same. I also wonder about Mary. They say she consented, they say she was young, they say she was loving and faithful and, up until this moment, quite ordinary. I wonder not if she was uncertain (I’m sure she was), but how did she manage her uncertainty? How would she raise this baby? Who would believe her? Would her family stay by her side? Now I’m wondering about my moments of uncertainty. I’m getting better at resting in mystery, just simply not knowing sometimes. With big life transitions, there is always uncertainty, but what do we do with it? Where do we let it take us, and when are we okay with just not knowing sometimes? When the answers aren’t clear, where does that leave us?

22/12/2022

19 Dec: Promise. Here is a picture of the southern end of Lake Taupō, with the setting sun, and the harakeke silhouetted against the sky. I think a sunrise probably depicts promise better than a sunset, like the promise of a new day or a new beginning. But what if we thought about promise as a looking-back exercise rather than a looking-forward one? What promises have been kept for you? Which ones have you kept? What about the broken or failed ones, have you grieved what might have been? What does this word mean to you?

22/12/2022

18 Dec: Love. I love the way the sun shines through the tree canopy and filters down to me standing on the forest floor. I love how the light gets in, even when it feels cold down here and when it’s kind of dark in the middle of the day because of this stunning mass of green all around. I’ve started looking up more on hikes recently, because I’m always so focused on my feet and not tripping (it’s still important to look at my feet) but I like to stop and look up when I can. I have been through many seasons of not feeling loved by people around me, and feeling largely invisible. It’s almost unbearable. And it’s maybe why I feel drawn to the work of spiritual direction. If we think about God as Love we can ask ourselves, when have we felt the most loved this week? When did we love others well? When have we felt love in a dark/empty/cold place? When is Love present in or absent from our lives? It’s like a mini version of the ignatian examen. Try it, or maybe use these questions as journal prompts like I do.

21/12/2022

17 Dec: Hold. Undoubtedly the most precious things I’ve ever held are my two babies. I remember the endless days of holding them and carrying them constantly, arms sore, sometimes both at the same time. I still hug them often but don’t hold them as much now that they’re older (and bigger). But I still find myself doing that swaying thing moms do when we wait in line or are just standing somewhere; we sway because we used to bounce and rock and hold babies for so long that it’s ingrained in us now. I also have this memory of singing in choirs and having to hold out a note for a long time. If I didn’t time my breath quite right, I couldn’t hold it. So I was taught to listen for my neighbors, make sure they were holding the note, and then take a quick breath to continue holding it myself so they could take a quick breath if needed. In that way we shared the load and the sound never faltered. It’s beautiful now that I think about it! Here’s a picture of my hand holding one of about a million pumice stones I’ve seen on the shore of Lake Taupō this week, created by lava flowing into water. Lava I could never hold, but this, this I can. What do you hold close to your heart? Is there something you’ve maybe put down recently, or need to put down? What could you hold that wouldn’t add to the burden you carry, but might increase your delight or contentment? When have you held something for someone else? And do they know when it’s time to hold something for you?

Yoga + Soul Care with Abigail

09/06/2025

31/12/2023

28/12/2023

27/12/2022

27/12/2022

26/12/2022

25/12/2022

24/12/2022

23/12/2022

22/12/2022

22/12/2022

21/12/2022

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