As a yoga instructor, I plan each class around a theme. Sometimes it focuses on a yogic principle, such as compassion, and other times it focuses on a specific pose, such as Downward Dog. Occasionally, my classes are inspired by music, like soundtracks or symphonies, or a simple everyday chore, like laundry.  As I’ve been planning for my October classes, one theme continues to pop up over and over: home.

Fall just makes me think of home. Just the sound of the word is poetic. The “om,” with its universal vibrations, comforts me in the way oven-baked mac’n’cheese does. October reminds me of my mom lining the front stoop with jack-o-laterns, collaguing the windows with cutouts of cardboard witches on brooms, and decorating the house with black cats and Indian corn wreaths. When I think of home, I think of rainy days staring out of my second grade class window, fallen leaves clinging to puddles, and coming home to the warmth of orange twinkle lights and fake spider webs.

How do we preserve a sense of home when we’re all grown up? How do we learn to be at home in our bodies during times of comfort—and times of challenge? How do we find  “home” when we feel lost or aimless? Yoga, for me, has become an answer to these questions that are too personal to articulate but that bring a sense of hope and peacefulness, what I need in the hectic craziness of my daily life.

Yet there’s another reason, besides autumn, that has fueled my upcoming yoga lessons: canning. Yep, the old fashioned word that evokes grannies, peaches, and Ball jars.

I’ll be the first to say it. Canning always has seemed like a hobby for those with too much time on their hands. Who in her/his right mind would EVER spend five hours canning tomatoes when she/he could just go to the grocery store and buy 10 cans of tomatoes for 10 bucks? With how fast-paced our lives are, why on earth spend time doing things they did back in the day because they had to—in the pre-industrial era?

While I’m at it, I’ll also admit no one in my family that I am aware of canned. I didn’t grow up with Grandma canning and me helping, like so many cheesy  (no offense) canning stories go.

There’s no family lineage, and there’s not enough time in the day.  But this fall, I’ve started canning. And I like it. A lot.

In a culture where mass-produced, pre-packaged canned goods and foods are so widely available, canning makes me feel like I’m preserving a sense of home for my family. I use local, ripe tomatoes, crisp green beans, gorgeous candy-striped beets, and regal spears of okra, and I preserve them as they are or in brines, so we can enjoy them come winter (and “Winter is coming,” the Starks would say on Game of Thrones) when everything tastes bland and blah.

It’s cool to share these goodies with family and friends, too. Recently, I gave jars of pickled beets, beans, and peppers to a couple of close friends. They shot me this text a couple of nights later: “Thanks for the beans and beets. They made our night.” Really, is there a higher compliment than having loved ones love the food you’ve shared with them?

And once I got over the fear of possible contamination that could result in death, of screwing up the science sealing, and of wasting an afternoon on something that could taste totally gross, canning became a form of mediation. It takes full concentration and requires living in the moment as the moment is happening. (Again, yogic principles can be found in ordinariness of life.) With canning, the moment becomes about the practice, moving with intention from step to step, and about the season, honoring the fruits and vegetables of the here-and-now.

All that said, I’m not a fan of canning tomatoes. Sure, we all want that perfect summer tomato in the dead of winter, but I’d rather wait for summer and eat my fair share of raw tomatoes than blanch five pounds, peel the skin from each and every one, deseed them, boil them, and then stuff them into four (if you’re lucky) quart jars that need to be processed for forty-five minutes. Maybe one day I’ll get it, but right now canned tomatoes are just easier to buy.

Dilly beans and Red Wine Pickled Beets, on the other hand, are a completely different story. Forget Christmas with its ham and gifts; I’m giddy for unveiling my relish tray at Thanksgiving: the beauty of the colors, the sweet and sourness of the brines, the brightness of summer veggies preserved perfectly in vinegars, spices, and some wild hot dried peppers procured from Mexico by a good friend.

Come November, I’ll have a few yoga classes touch on the theme of digestion and restoring the tummy after holiday eating. But until then, this month of October, I’m meshing my new love of canning with the fond memories of fall and my mom to create some meaningful yoga classes that lead participants home with light hearts, light minds, and hungry tummies.