Taking The Leap

As a child, Leap Day always made we think of two things, my dad's birthday and the Olympics.

Now that the Olympics are ever two years and my dad is perfectly happy to celebrate his birthday sometime in February or March Leap Day isn't really on my radar.

This week, however, I found myself thinking a lot about this one day, it's subtle and tremendously powerful role in our lives. Simply put Leap Day maintains the balance for the calendar year as we know it. Without Leap Day every four years our calendar would begin to slip out of balance and eventually we would find ourselves celebrating Christmas in July.

So once every four years we are given this gift of time to keep things in balance, we are offered the opportunity to take a leap -a careful, calculated leap. At the start of this week I spent my hour and half yoga practice thinking about the leaps in my life, focused on the qualities I had to summon to make them happen.

I landed on three: Courage, faith and the willingness to be uncomfortable.

At the close of practice on Monday our teacher retold the story of Hanuman's Leap, the Monkey God in Hindu mythology which reinforced the power of moving with intention, dedication and courage from where you are toward something you believe in.

Before the last hours of daylight tick away, before the clock ticks away the minutes of February 29th, 2012 and before you find yourself out of borrowed time - name your leap, summon the qualities you need support the action and start the journey.